Here is a blog post I wrote about a week ago following a trip to Pennington Country Park between Wigan and Manchester.
About a fortnight ago I had the privilege of spending an
afternoon birding at Pennington Flash Country Park near Leigh, Greater
Manchester, during a foray up North to see my dear friend Tom, getting out
birding for the first time in a few days.
The site, which sits on the fringe of the great conurbation, between the
City of Manchester and Wigan, was created in part by mining subsidence, where
collapses enabled the formation of several large pools. An expansive lake, used
by boaters, birders and the inevitable duck feeders armed with bags of bread,
greeted us when we arrived. A scan of the water revealed distant goosander and
Tufty among the Mallards, which was promising, but it was the nature reserve
which adjoins it that we were interested in. A number of hides overlook a range
of smaller pools, all home to interesting waterfowl.
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| Shoveller and Goosander at Pennington Flash. |
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| Confident Reed Bunting, close to the appropriately named Bunting Hide. |
The first hide we visited revealed Shoveller engaged in their rather
fascinating and rather mesmerising courtship dances, the male and female
swimming in close circles, matching each others’ speed while often beak to
beak, forming pair bonds that would presumably travel North with them onto
their summer breeding grounds. There
were also several Goosander, which
typically winter on inland waters, especially in the North, where they seem to
be growing more common. They are among
Britain’s prettiest ducks, the green-headed males sporting bright white flanks,
while the females crests are endearingly punky.
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| Blue tit from Bunting Hide. |
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| Stock Doves from Bunting Hide. |
The highlight of the visit had to be the experience of sitting in what is
called the bunting hide, just watching so many birds around the feeders.
Mottled and wintery Reed Buntings, smart hen Chaffinches, gaudy male
Chaffinches, and fascinatingly pink Bullfinches landed on the tables. A grey
squirrel, apparently blind in one eye but seemingly none the worse for its
disability, enjoyed the seeds it could pull from behind the bars. Little, noisy parties of Long Tailed Tits came
and went from the hanging peanut feeders, accompanied by Blue Tits and a Coal
Tit with an unusually long beak, perhaps regrown following some injury. A pair of handsome stock doves, in beautiful
slate grey plumage with their deep metallic green neck flashes, not dissimilar
to woodpigeons but so much (even) more beautiful sat eyeing each other in the
trees at the back of the clearing. The clearing was dotted with bird tables and
feeders, bringing all the passerines so close. The scarcest bird in this little
clearing was a beautiful female Brambling, a winter visitor from Scandinavia
and other more boreal climes. It resembles a Chaffinch, with pale orange on the
breast and mottled black and brown on the back and crown, with similar wing
markings to its cogener, but suffused with orange, and a bright white rump. It
fed on one of the bird tables, sadly the one furthest from us but still close
enough for a photo for the records.
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| Partially blind squirrel |
After we had sat in the hide a few moments, the birds scattered, and a Sparrowhawk flew through the clearing at speed. The mallards and moorhens which did not flee suddenly paddled or swam into the vegetation, apparently still nervous. The bird of prey disappeared, maneuvering between the trees, and we could not tell whether it had caught anything, but it took the passerines a long time to return, with the feisty blue tits appearing first, and the shy bullfinches taking their time to return to the clearing.
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| Brambling |
This grey day was just the night after the latest round of storms which had
affected the country, and especially the North West, and a few trees were down,
including one close to bunting hide. Crack willows by the main lake had been
snapped, their jagged edges reaching skyward, and elsewhere smaller Birches lay
uprooted across the paths. The clouds were coming over in waves, and the wind was
light but chilling, a shadow of the destructive force which had brought trees
down on top of cars in the town centre just the night before. Despite the
sporadic greyness and showers we wandered through the diverse habitats around
the pools, adding a pair of kingfisher to our day list, the two bright little
birds pursuing each other at speed, zigzagging close to the water surface. We
saw a very windswept moorhen picking its way among the patches of gravel which formed islands in the pools, its breast feathers caught in the breeze.
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| Windswept moorhen |
We saw a
handsome Goldeneye out on the water of the main lake, and plenty of little
grebes and scruffy, first winter grey herons. Herons seem to have a roost in a cluster of
trees beside one of the scrapes, to which the huge, broad winged birds were
returning as we watched. As the sun
began to set, the sky cleared and we spent a few moments trying, fruitlessly, to pick out a Mediterranean gull reported
on the sightings board among the confiding, black headed gulls which had
gathered amongst the motley collection of wild and feral mallards.
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| Motley mallards. |
Pennington Flash sits among major conurbations and is well used and much valued
by a range of people. As a country park it represents a popular local day out. Despite
the breeze we saw a range of dog walkers and other members of the public
wandering around the site, but nevertheless it held a range of remarkable
wildlife habitats and a surprising array of wildlife, and has become, in my mind, something of a gem in the Greater
Manchester area, and I look forward to seeing it again!
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| Sunset Gulls. |
