Birding Group Visit to Goyt Valley 12th June 2012
Our morning outing today was to the Goyt Valley which is located between Macclesfield and Buxton in the Peak District National Park. The valley is close to the Cheshire and Derbyshire county border. The River Goyt that flows through the valley rises high on Axe Edge Moor near the Cat and Fiddle Public House and flows north through Taxal, Whaley Bridge and New Mills before joining with the River Tame near Stockport to form the River Mersey. We went to the part that is know as the Upper Goyt Valley which is close to the source of the River Goyt. There are two main reservoirs in the valley, Fernilee and Errwood , both provide drinking water to Stockport and its surrounding areas. As usual we parked at the southernmost of the car parks opposite the Errwood Reservoir and crossed the road to the reservoir side.
The first bird we spotted was a Willow Warbler calling from a short tree right in front of us. However, in general, there seemed to be very few birds about which was surprising considering that it was the first dry day in ages. Presumably we should have been there earlier because although there were few birds about when we were there there were some quality sightings if not much in the way of quantity.
We walked downhill to the nearest end of the reservoir. Some of the group said that normally Redstarts nested in the wall on the opposite side of the road and you could see why it would make good nesting sites with large cracks in the stone providing well protected hollows. Perhaps we were a little late in the year because we did not see any nesting activity. Soon, however, I was called back to see a Pied Flycatcher come and go from a bare branch straight in front of us. It only came and went a half dozen times but the branch it chose to hunt from was so open that the views were very good. When it disappeared we were looking again for it deeper in the shrubbery when we caught a brief glimpse of a Redstart. We entered the woods at the gate and followed the reservoir down to where it becomes a river and just in what looked like prime Dipper territory we saw out first of the year, preening on a rock and giving us good views; I even managed to get a scope on it briefly before it took off up-river.
We got the part of the river where there is a steep path uphill back to the road so we took this. On the road back you can come off the road and go uphill through some fields which we did and at the top some of the group got views of Tree Pipit (but I didn’t). As we walked back down to the car park we saw another (or the same) Willow Warbler and it gave us very good views. All in all it had been a bit lacking in birds really but we could not consider ourselves too hard done by to have seen Redstart, Pied Flycatcher, Dipper and Willow Warbler but there was still a bit more to come.
We all decided to go the the Cat and Fiddle pub for lunch and on our way there we got a really close view of a Curlew as it landed just a few metres from the roadside, all wings and legs and bill as it landed. At the pub, as I sat looking out of the window there I saw a Skylark ascending but best of all was when we left and took the winding road downhill, there to our amazement was a Little Owl – my first ever ! perched on a roadside. Passengers of both cars saw it and we were sure of our identification. One last sighting of a Kestrel added to a day that might have been lacking in quantity of birds seen but was not lacking in quality !
Bird Sightings : Upper Goyt Valley
| Species | Count |
|---|---|
| Mallard | 1 |
| Kestrel | 1 |
| Curlew | 1 |
| Little Owl | 1 |
| Blue Tit | 4 |
| Great Tit | 4 |
| Skylark | 1 |
| Willow Warbler | 1 |
| Dipper | 1 |
| Redstart | 1 |
| Pied Flycatcher | 1 |