Nov 30 2011
November saw a range of weather from the very mild and sunny to the misty, cold and autumnal. The month started mild and then by the end of the first week there was a little rain and a considerable amount of mist, overcast skies and, of course, the evenings are dark with dusk being around 5pm. Towards the middle of the month there were a number of bright, dry and crisp days. The second half of the month remained mild – the mildest for years.
Nov 29 2011
I hadn’t been to Sandbach Flashes before so I looked it up in “Where to Watch Birds : North West England & the Isle of Man” by A. Conlin et al. This describes Sandbach Flashes as “a series of 15 or so shallow pools formed during the last century as a result of salt mining. The flashes lie in a triangle between Sandbach, Middlewich and Crewe. The main flashes are in an area designated as an SSSI.”(More Details) In fact we only went to one of these flashes, Elton Hall Flash and we would not have had time to visit any of the others anyway because there was so much to see at Elton Hall Flash.
Nov 22 2011
The birding group were a little bit concerned that the visit to Neumann’s Flash and Haydyn’s Pool wouldn’t be very fruitful because of the lack of rain recently but, as it happened, the pools were quite full. In truth there wasn’t that much around but there were a couple of good sighting nonetheless. Above Neumann’s Flash a large flock of Lapwings were flying to and fro but they wouldn’t settle down and kept wheeling around over the water. We couldn’t see any birds of prey around so we couldn’t quite figure out why they were so skittish. At the edges of the the flock was a smaller flock of smaller birds but at that point we could not determine exactly what they were. One of the group thought that they had heard a Golden Plover call but we couldn’t be sure.
Nov 20 2011
On the water at Chorlton Water Park we saw the usual Canada Geese, Black-headed Gulls, Mallards, Coots and Mute Swans but there were also about a dozen Tufted Ducks, an adult Great Crested Grebe with two juveniles and a pair of Pochard. We met a young boy who was fishing and he said that he had seen a Kingfisher earlier in the day (probably fishing from the island at the visitor centre side of the lake) but we did not manage to see it.
Oct 31 2011
We went to Martin Mere on the 2nd where I bought a new pair of binoculars and gave them their first run out. The birding group got going properly this month so we went to Marbury Country Park on 4th and Pennington Flash on the 11th and Leighton Moss on the 18th and Inner Marsh Farm on 31st. Inner Marsh Farm is now expanded with the addition of three new hides and the opening up of other ponds. The whole area is now called Burton Mere Wetland. See below for more details of this first visit to the new RSPB site. On the 24th no one else could attend the weekly birding group outing due to various commitments. We had planned to go to Wigan Flashes which had been postponed previously but since there was only myself and Anne and Mike available we decided to go instead to Martin Mere for our first real sight of the Whooper Swans and the Pink-footed Geese in large numbers.It was a fine day and we did a comprehensive tour of the site with around 31 species spotted and large numbers of some of them as the migrants start to collect for the winter.
Oct 31 2011
This was the first time we had been to this particular part of the site. Previously the site had been called Inner Marsh Farm and had a small entrance “hut” and a small car park. You could walk through woodlands and then between fields and then back into more woodlands before you came to the single hide which overlooked a lake. They instituted an expansion plan which involved digging out some more lakes and adding three more hides on the opposite side of the lakes from the original hide. The area opposite the old hide has now become the new reception area where they have a main “hide” which is a large windowed double-glazed affair – all rather posh. They have another, smaller hide just off to the side and both of these overlook the new ponds. There are also toilets here though, as yet, no cafe or coffee machines. We started off by checking in at the hide at Reception but only remained there briefly before going on to the far hide where there is a little display charting the history of the whole site and how it got to the substantial size it is now.
Oct 25 2011
It being a Tuesday, it would normally be a birding group day but as it happened everyone else was busy – probably because it was half-term – so we were looking at just the three of us – Anne, Mike and myself – going to Wigan Flashes which was the scheduled visit for this week. Since we didn’t have to fir in with anyone else for the day we decided to make more of a day of it so we decided to go to Martin Mere where more of the Pink-footed Geese had arrived and the first big batch of Whooper Swans had already arrived.
Oct 18 2011
Although the day started out pretty wet and looking a bit grim, by the time we got to Leighton Moss RSPB the day had picked up a little and although it remained very variable, the weather managed to keep dry whilst we were there. We thought we stood a bit of a chance of seeing Bearded Tits as there had been reports of them particularly near the grit trays on the Avenue so we headed off in the direction of the Public Hide first. Although we did not manage to see any Bearded Tits we did have one or two highlights.
Oct 11 2011
We were supposed to go to Wigan Flashes this day but the weather was so poor that it was decided that we should go to Pennington Flash again just because it has enough hides to provide pretty continuous cover if needed and needed it was as we went from hide to hide whenever there was a bit of a lull in the rain. there was also a driving wind which is always at its most furious in the Horrocks hide where we started. The only good spot here was three Little Grebes although we all spent an age discussing whether a duck with a white front was actually a cross bred Mallard or something more interesting. In the end we decided that it was a cross breed because it started swimming with other Mallards when some flew in. Apart from that it was all Coots and Canada Geese and Lapwings and Cormorants
Oct 04 2011
We were hoping that today’s birding group visit to Marbury Country Park would be a chance to catch up with those birds who had seemed to be lying low of recent weeks but we walked through the woods at Marbury with hardly a sight of any birds. I spotted a single Nuthatch and there was the odd Blackbird and Magpie and even a Jay was spotted by some but- other than that – the pickings were lean indeed. We did eventually spot a couple of Buzzards and a Kestrel but woodland birds seemed to be at a premium today. We had better luck when we came to Budworth Mere however.
