Wellacre Country Park

Jack Lane local nature reserve 

Having finally caught up with some sleep I didn't want to entirely waste what promised to be the last day of Summer, nor mess about with trains, so I had a late afternoon wander round Wellacre Country Park.

Wellacre Wood 

Wellacre Wood was deathly quiet. A robin sang from one of the nearby gardens but in the wood itself all I heard was the very occasional quiet contact call from somewhere in the undergrowth. A blackbird, a blue tit and a dunnock silently flitted between bushes. As I walked along I weighed up the nest boxes high in the trees, every single one of them had been attacked by great spotted woodpeckers.

Wellacre Country Park 

Passing out into open country I noticed the sky was rapidly clouding over from the West, which was odd because the wind at ground level was coming from the East where the sky was clear. The horses had been moved between fields, the carrion crows following the horses, the magpies fossicking about the fields left behind and the woodpigeons rummaging about the margins of both. About a hundred starlings sat on the electricity pylons by Irlam Locks. I think we've had swallows and martins for the year here.

Jack Lane was even quieter than Wellacre Wood. A couple of woodpigeons sat in trees, magpies flew over, a pair of bullfinches whistled sadly on the railway embankment.

Jack Lane local nature reserve 

There was another pair of bullfinches on the embankment near Dutton's Pond, together with some great tits, blue tits and a chiffchaff. Half a dozen mallards dabbled on the pond, moorhens were heard but not seen. Ditto the ring-necked parakeets shrieking in the trees beyond.

There were more great tits and a chiffchaff with the robins on Green Hill. There was also a thin passage of red admirals, all fluttering Southwards.

As I walked down to Flixton Road a heron flew low overhead and half a dozen mallards lurked under Flixton Bridge. As I waited for my bus waves of woodpigeons, jackdaws and parakeets started heading to roost even though it was only teatime. I was fifty yards from home when it started raining.

Birchwood

Long-tailed tit

I woke early to the sound of a skein of pink-footed geese flying overhead in a bright, wispy blue sky. The plan for the day was to go over to Martin Mere, see if the Russian pink-footed goose was still about then have a wander about to see what I could find. It had been a long night, I was very tired and getting to Martin Mere is such hard work I don't want to only have a superficial look round so I parked the idea. Tomorrow is another day. It's an odd thing, up to perhaps fifteen years ago all the white-fronted geese I saw in the Northwest, and most of the reports I heard of, were of Greenland white-fronted geese and now they're almost exclusively Russian. I'm too tired to think of the possible causes and effects.

I didn't want to waste the day so I put the roll of carpet I use as a brain to the task of selecting an afternoon walk. It needed to be fairly undemanding and I desperately wanted to avoid Manchester and the school run. Then I dozed off on the cat's sofa (it's my sofa, bought and paid for by me before she was even a twinkle in a tomcat's eye but we're having a territorial dispute).

Anyway, when I woke up I got the train to Birchwood, the idea being to have a teatime walk round Risley Moss.

Birchwood Forest Park 

Leaving the station I turned right and walked down the road to the entrance to Birchwood Forest Park. There was an odd transition, robins were singing in the hedgerows along the road, this part of the park was silent. But not empty, blackbirds were gorging themselves on haws and elderberries and woodpigeons clattered about in the trees.

Blackbird 

About a hundred yards on one of the clumps of hawthorns was busy with both blackbirds and song thrushes. The blackbirds picked off the haws at the end of twigs by blue tit-like acrobatics while the song thrushes treated them like flying insects and snatched them on the wing.

Long-tailed tit

It wasn't long before the first robin started singing and not long after that I bumped into the first mixed tit flock. As far as I could tell this one was all long-tailed tits, blue tits and great tits; another I later bumped into by Birchwood Brook included goldcrests and a nuthatch. Also by the brook was a rather scruffy looking juvenile heron.

I took the path that leads through the trees to Risley Moss. As it crossed the brook I had a look round for any dragonflies — I'd been buzzed by a couple of common darters along the way — and found a grey wagtail instead.

By Risley Moss 

I got to Risley Moss and it was shut. It was just after five o'clock and I forgot that this is one of the fenced-off pieces of our natural heritage that runs on office hours. Presumably it's all packed up and put into a cupboard once the gates are locked, except on Fridays when it's not unpacked at all. It's a minor inconvenience to me but it irks me deeply. What's the point of having a community nature reserve if you can't walk round it at tea time? A community woodland where you'll never be able to listen out for an owl? I can understand the visitor centre having set hours but not the reserve itself. All I could think of was the sketch in the late, great Eddie Braben's "The Show With Ten Legs" where one of the characters asks: "What time's the countryside open, Doctor Bum?"

There was no point in lingering. I checked the train times and I had half an hour to get the one taking me directly home from Birchwood Station and it would roughly take that long to retrace my steps through Birchwood Forest Park. That route's a right-angled dogleg running along the brook then turning and running parallel to the railway line. I decided to go diagonally through Birchwood and in doing so discovered something. Whenever I've gone through Birchwood on the bus the layout's baffled me. Today I learned that it's laid out as a collection of pedestrian rat runs with the roads meandering around them. The most direct route from A to B in Birchwood will be a pedestrian path. Which baffles Google Maps, by the way, you have to be standing a good way away from a road for it to realise you're on a walkway. So I got to the station with ten minutes to spare. And the train was nearly quarter of an hour late. But that was okay, I sat in the sun zoning out the muzak and listening to the jays rattling in the hedgerow on the Liverpool platform.

Winter Hill

Winter Hill 

I had a yen to go hillwalking and for once I had enough sense to not set off on the ascent in the heat of the day. Thus it was mid-afternoon when I got off the 125 bus at Bottom o'th'Moor and had a nosy at the pool in the old quarry by the road. Just the two Muscovy ducks and a migrant hawker today.

The old quarry on Chorley Old Road 

It was a cloudless day and there was a nice breeze blowing as I walked up George's Road. Carrion crows, magpies and woodpigeons fossicked about in the fields, chiffchaffs squeaked, robins sang and great tits called from the trees. A couple of swallows skimmed the tops of the fields but weren't for stopping and were quickly on their way.

Georges Road and Wilderswood 

The road skirts Wilderswood, the robins and great tits in there being joined by dunnocks and a pheasant. A couple of ravens flew in and out of the trees before flying low over the houses at Montcliffe and disappearing into the quarry behind.

The path up the moor

I took the first path going up onto the moor. This one eventually leads to the Winter Hill access road just to the South of Two Lads. At first sight there was nothing about, I soon found the moor was fizzing with meadow pipits. Any time I accidentally flushed one mipit a dozen would take to the air, fly about for a minute then vanish into the grass and heather. The ravens emerged from the quarry and were shadowed from a distance by a rival family of ravens, four in all, and they all drifted over the rise and headed towards Burnt Edge. After that I'd hear their cronking but not see them.

As a little stream crossed the path I accidentally flushed a stonechat and a party of mipits that had been having a drink. I was trying to find where the nearest one had disappeared into the grass when something orange fluttered across my line of view. I managed to find it again and was surprised to see it was a large heath butterfly, I didn't know they could be found this high up.

The Winter Hill access road 

I walked up the access road to Winter Hill. There were lots more mipits about and a couple of carrion crows patrolled the moor, one of them returning each time to the same fencepost by Hole Bottom. I was hoping for sign or sound of red grouse but it wasn't my day for them today. The scenery was wonderful, the tops golden in the sunlight and the Lancashire and Cheshire plains shades of blue. A shimmer of light in the distance was the sun glistening on the sea by the Burbo Bank wind farm. Back before the Trafford Centre was built I could see Winter Hill from my house, I can still see my house from Winter Hill.

Looking over towards Bolton and Manchester 

You only appreciate how high the Winter Hill transmitter is when you realise that for the past half mile you've been telling yourself the compound is over the next rise. They were locking up and going home when I arrived. I scanned around, this time of year black redstarts pass by and sometimes hang about a bit here. There had been reports of a couple but all I was seeing were some mipits and a carrion crow. I spent a while admiring the scenery and checking for anything flying about on the moors. Looking back over the compound I thought I saw a couple of meadow pipits flying over the wire fence on the other side. Then I realised they didn't have a speck of white on their tails — the white tail margins on a meadow pipit are very conspicuous even at a distance. These birds were a hundred yards away and had uniformly dark tails. You've got to get fairly close or be lucky with the light to see the red properly on a black redstart, flying low in bright light against the sky they were almost in silhouette. They disappeared into the compound and all I could find after that were mipits and the carrion crow.

Looking over to Burnt Edge and beyond 

Rivington Pike 

I started the wander back down. At Hole Bottom I decided, reluctantly,  that I didn't have the legs for walking over Burnt Edge and on to Walker Fold. I've never walked down the access road to Georges Road so I decided I'd do that for a change. The sun was approaching the golden hour and the scenery was magnificent though I was glad when I'd dropped down enough to no longer be able to see the Manchester developers' follies glowing in the sunlight. Lots more mipits zipped about, carrion crows called, there was the distant cronking of ravens and a couple of kestrels hunted over tracts of heather moorland.

Kestrel, Hole Bottom
The only bird I managed to photograph up tops.

Rivington Pike (right) and Wilderswood 

Dropping down into Montcliffe the horses in the fields tiptoed round jackdaws and a charm of a few dozen goldfinches fed on the ragworts on the margins.

A charm of goldfinches, Montcliffe

I joined Georges Road and walked down, resisting the temptation to go for a wander in Wilderswood. A raven flew low overhead daring me to try to take its photo and dipping behind treetops whenever I tried. Down the hill I saw the bus back to Bolton pass by but I wasn't too perturbed, they're about every twenty minutes this time of day, it just meant the connection between the train from Bolton and my train home was a bit tighter than I'd like. As it was, for once it worked like a charm and I got home to the tail end of a fiery sunset.

Chorley and beyond

Mersey Valley

Heron, Merseybank 

It was a glorious day, I didn't want to spoil it by stressing about travel or finding anything in particular so I opted for a slow drift up the Mersey Valley starting at Turn Moss and ending somewhere beyond Chorlton Water Park. In the event I walked into West Didsbury.

Hawthorn Lane 

Robins were singing, parakeets squeaked and shrieked, and squirrels chased each other about as I walked down Hawthorn Lane then cut across the clearing into Ivy Green. There were plenty of jackdaws and woodpigeons about and a couple of carrion crows practised for their Winter songs.

Chorlton Ees 

At first it looked like more of the same in Chorlton Ees save that the small tortoiseshells of the open paths of Ivy Green gave way to the speckled woods of the thicker woodland. A couple of great tits took exception to me and as I was watching them I noticed a couple of leaves high in a tree behind them fall upwards. My usual mistake when looking for the runners and riders in a mixed tit flock is to look too high, today I was looking too low: all the action was going on in the high canopy of the ash trees. More great tits, half a dozen blue tits, some long-tailed tits, at least three juvenile chiffchaffs, a couple of goldcrests… and a lot of unidentifiable shadows flitting behind leaves. And not a sound from any of they.

Where the action was

There was bank maintenance work going on at Jackson's Boat so that stretch of the river was dead quiet except for a lot of grass dust. It wasn't a great deal busier further along, a few mallards and a heron flew downriver, a few black-headed gulls drifted about, there was the usual traffic of woodpigeons overhead. The first brown hawker of the day patrolled the bankside. There wasn't much happening in the hedgerows. It's a lot early to expect redpolls or siskins in the larches by the golf course but I checked them out and got squeaked at by a chiffchaff.

By the Mersey

It was with a sense of reckless abandon that I plunged into Barlow Tip at the first opportunity and barged my way about along one of the wilder paths. Blackbirds and blue tits joined the robins and chiffchaffs in the trees, wrens sang deep in bramble patches, a pair of bullfinches whistled sadly in an elderberry bush. Every so often a Southern hawker would skim past the small trees. 

Barlow Tip 

I emerged onto the metalled path and decided to stick with it, some of the brambles and blackthorns had drawn blood. This path was busy with brown hawkers, a few territorial bouts resulting in mid-air collisions I could hear from yards away. A migrant hawker sped through in a dead straight line, this is one of the circumstances where it would be the hunted not the hunter.

Chorlton Water Park 

Unsurprisingly Chorlton Water Park was busy with people. It was also busy with tufted ducks and black-headed gulls, it looked a bit light on mute swans, Canada geese and mallards and nearly all the coots were down the other end of the lake.

Tufted ducks, Chorlton Water Park
Female tufties often show rounded heads and sometimes have a white blaze at the base of the bill, suggestive of scaup. A scaup's a much bigger bird and they generally give the impression that they lie lower in the water than tufties.

River Mersey by Kenworthy Woods 

I chose not to walk round the lake, I went back to the river and walked upstream. The bridge to Kenworthy Woods is still closed so I carried on along the river listening to the calls of buzzards, nuthatches, dunnocks and wrens and the songs of robins and chiffchaffs. Oddly there were no parakeets along this stretch.

Heron, Merseybank 

There was more bankside maintenance going on by Princess Parkway so it was a while beyond there before I started bumping into mallards dabbling on the river. A heron was sunbathing on the far bank of the river and not caring overmuch about the walkers and cyclists passing by. I almost didn't notice the female mandarin sitting among the rocks at a bend in the river.

Mandarin duck, Merseybank 

I decided to call it quits when I got to the steep path up the bank and onto Merseybank Park. It was a short walk to the bus stop for the 23 and thence the weekly shop in Urmston.

Fylde

Black tern, Fairhaven Lake 

It was a cool, misty morning but the Met Office reckoned the mist and fog was inland so I reckoned on heading for the seaside. I've barely touched the Fylde this year and a couple of young black terns have been haunting Fairhaven Lake for a fortnight so I decided to go there then have a look round Skipool Creek and thence have a wander round on a bus before wandering back home.

Canada geese, Fairhaven Lake 

I'd dressed for the morning I'd set out in which was unfortunate as it was a warm sunny day when I got off the train at Ansell & Fairhaven. Robins, great tits and a coal tit sang in a churchyard as I passed by and there were cabbage whites all over the shop. The lake was like a shining mirror, unruffled even by the Canada geese and black-headed gulls on it.

Fairhaven Lake 

It took less than a minute to find the two black terns as they wheeled about above the lake. And very nice they were, too, but a beggar to try and photograph as they were doing a lot of tight wingtip turns that made it well-nigh impossible to focus the camera on where they were going to be.

Black tern, Fairhaven Lake 

Ironically, the best shots I got came when they flew overhead and disappeared over the beach. I felt disappointed and a lot guilty that they'd been here all that time and chose now to leave.

Black tern, Fairhaven Lake 

I had a walk round the lake, which was very agreeable. Robins sang, blackbirds and wrens rummaged in bushes, great tits and blue tits bounced about in the trees. A few Southern hawkers patrolled the edges of the tree canopy. Mallards and a little egret lurked on the banks of the islands in the lake while Canada geese and mute swans cruised about.

I bobbed over the bank onto the seawall promenade. I was tempted to take a walk up to St Anne's but the path was very busy and I decided to stick to the original plan. It was lowish tide so most of the birdlife was shimmering in the heat haze some distance away. Cormorants and shelducks were easy enough to identify but the distorted silhouettes of oystercatchers and curlews needed a bit of help by their calls. Most of the gulls loafing out there were herring gulls with a few lesser black-backs and a couple of great black-backs looking even huger than usual in the haze. A couple of redshanks and a ringed plover were a bit closer, their silhouettes undistorted.

Juvenile great black-back, Fairhaven
At first I was more puzzled by this bird than I should have been. It was on its own and I thought it was smaller than it was.

Juvenile great black-back, Fairhaven 
I got the scale right once it approached the dead oystercatcher.

Juvenile great black-back, Fairhaven 

Fairhaven 

I followed the walk round. Redshanks and black-headed gulls dotted the wet mud, a couple of pied wagtails skittered about and a little egret was shrimping by the side.

Redshank, Fairhaven 

Little egret, Fairhaven 

I returned to the lake to get an ice cream cornet and was relieved to see the terns were back, though even more difficult to photograph as they were sticking below rooftop height.

Black tern, Fairhaven Lake 

I got the train back as far as Kirkham and Wesham, changed there for Poulton-le-Fylde and walked down from the station to Skipool Creek. I don't know what it is but that walk always seems longer than it is.

Skipool Creek 

The trees down Wyre Road were busy with robins, great tits and chaffinches. Magpies fussed about and mallards dabbled in the creek.

Little egrets and heron, River Wyre at Skipool

Out on the river loafing gulls stood in lines on the mud banks, black-headed gulls near the bridge, herring gulls and lesser black-backs downstream. Little egrets stood in groups, lapwings fussed about, Canada geese and greylags bathed in the river. A few curlews and redshanks fossicked about on the mud.

Herring gulls, black-headed gulls, Canada geese and greylags, River Wyre at Skipool 

I spent a while trying and failing to find any other waders and called it quits. It was too nice a day for stressing myself out looking for things that weren't there. I had a leisurely wander back then caught the 74 bus for a meandering ride back to Preston visiting bits of the area that were new to me. At Preston the next train was the Manchester Airport train that connects with my train home, it would have been an act of folly to snub a piece of luck like that.

That's the 200 reached, I can stop fretting about it now.

Skipool Creek 

Pennington Flash

Little egret

After the running about of the last few days I just wanted a simple toddle round on what had become a pleasant Autumnal day. I played bus stop bingo: if the 256 arrived first I'd have a wander round Wellacre Country Park, if the 25 I'd see if I could connect with the 126 for a walk round Pennington Flash.

Walking in from St Helens Road
There's a spooky look to white poplars in Autumn.

Walking into Pennington Flash from St Helens Road was eerily quiet. The road's closed for yet more repair work but that didn't stop there being plenty of people about. Even so it was an oddly quiet walk. A heron and a woodpigeon flew overhead, a wren flitted silently across the path and a magpie muttered as the branch it landed on bent a bit too far for its liking.

Black-headed gulls

I reached the car park where the usual motley assemblage of mute swans, Canada geese, mallards and black-headed gulls were mugging for scraps. The mallards are barely out of eclipse plumage and are already head-bobbing and quacking for the ladies. The Egyptian geese have moved on, I wonder where to as much as I wonder where from, there aren't reports of their peregrinations round the region. There were plenty of coots on the flash as well as a couple of rafts of tufted ducks, each a couple of dozen birds strong. Out on the middle of the flash, beyond the coots and pairs of great crested grebes, a loose raft of a few dozen herring gulls and lesser black-backs drifted and bathed. I scanned round to see if there were any terms about but every likely prospect in the distance drifted in closer and turned out to be a young black-headed gull.

From the Horrocks Hide
Tufted ducks and great crested grebes, cormorant and a dabchick.

I worked my way through the crowds by the visitor centre and had a look from the Horrocks Hide. The water was high and half the spit was submerged. A line of cormorants, herring gulls, Canada geese and lapwings ran the edge of the far end of the spit. There wasn't a right lot closer to the hide, just a couple of coots. Stretched across the middle of the channel beyond the spit was a raft of a few dozen tufted ducks and great crested grebes, a few cormorants and dabchicks fished in the bight.

So far it had been very quiet indeed for small birds. As I walked down the path a couple of robins did a few limbering up exercises before deciding not to sing. Then I noticed some leaves moving the wrong way so I stood still and let the mixed tit flock come to me. Oddly enough it was the goldcrests and treecreeper I saw first. A dozen long-tailed tits soon appeared then a few blue tits, great tits and chiffchaffs. And all, except for one long-tailed tit, in complete silence.

Tom Edmondson Hide 

The Tom Edmondson Hide was busy with head-bobbing gadwalls. A family of mute swans steamed through one way while a few coot quarreled by the other way. The pool on the other side of the path was quiet, a couple of teal lurking in the reeds and a young shoveler chugging past and disappearing into the reeds.

Gadwalls, Tom Edmondson Hide 

Teal and shovelers, Ramsdales Hide 

The reeds had been cut back at Ramsdales Hide the better to see a couple of dozen teal dozing on the islands with a few shovelers. The drake shovelers were still in eclipse plumage and some of the teal hadn't completely moulted out of it. A little egret stalked the water margins while a young heron lurked by the reeds. I'd been hoping to hear the usual Cetti's warbler in the wet scrub in the corner and was surprised to hear two singing scraps of song.

At Ramsdales Hide 

Walking towards the canal

Pennington Flash 

Tufted ducks and great crested grebes 

I decided not to head back into the crowds so I walked up to the rucks and thence to Slag Lane. I got better views of the birds on the Horrocks spit from this end and bumped into another silent mixed tit flock on the Northern shore. As I walked up the slope a couple of buzzards flying low overhead were harassed by carrion crows. A kestrel hovered over the meadows by Slag Lane.

Buzzard

Walking to Slag Lane 

I debated carrying on through Byrom Hall Wood but the 588 to Lowton passed me as I was about to cross Slag Lane which meant it would be coming back to Leigh in five minutes' time so I took the hint. It was supposed to be an afternoon's toddling about after all.