Goldfinches near the running track
Mistle thrush inside the track
Usual tufted ducks
Moorhen
Coot
Great Crested grebes
Mute Swan 4 juveniles
Grey Heron
Blue tits round lake

-- Edited by Ian McKerchar on Tuesday 20th of March 2012 10:33:13 PM

PM sent, Collette.

Well today I've been in Blackley Forest hoping to see great spotted woodpecker.. Only to find the tree has fallen down where I've previous seen them nesting.. Very disappointed as this is the only place ive seen them properly..

Then i Went to the lakes in Rhodes off Manchester rd, and saw 2 Crested Grebes on separate ponds so not sure if they were a pair ? Lot's of tufted ducks swans and Canada geese. I did see a pair of what I think we're Yellow Wagtails ?

I no its Boggart hole clough forum but thought I'd share for anyone who's interested,..

Is there anyone out there who's willing to share the usual location of the woodpeckers in the clough.? I've seen them once at the edge of the boating lake just up to the left of the steps that lead down to the path upto Moston.. I'm dying to see them again, but can only hear the tree tapping with no sightings... :0(

-- Edited by Dopeycc on Sunday 11th of March 2012 09:27:25 PM

Quiet

12 Tufted on the lakes was the one saving grace, but great weather all the same and I'm out tomorrow again

Edit: I live in vague hope I will stumble across the Green Woodpecker reported here, or even the possibly returning Waxwings Bill M saw last February (a year and 2 days ago!)

-- Edited by John Doherty on Sunday 19th of February 2012 02:43:33 PM

A walk through Queen's Park and Hendham Vale and on through Boggart. Highlights:

Queens Park and the vale -

Greenfinch in the park, never noted them there before.
1 Mistle Thrush (Park)
1 Grey Wagtail as usual (River Irk through Hendham Vale)

Boggart Hole Clough

The very first bird I saw was a Jay.
Following that the usual tits - Blue Great and Long Tailed.
Great Spotted Woodpecker (heard only on the corner of Angel Hill and the walkway)
1 Sparrowhawk (in tree across field off walkway, seems to be resident and known to dogwalkers)
Sizable Goldfinch flock in trees at the edge of the park near Moston Lane


The Lake:

12 Tufted Ducks, Coot, Moorhen, Canada Geese, quite a few Black-headed Gull.

One thing that could put BHC on the birding map is that a dogwalker who knows his birds has heard Green Woodpecker in there, last week. I live in hope myself, one would have to be lucky as the Great Spotted are hard to see there.

Cheers


-- Edited by John Doherty on Monday 16th of January 2012 05:52:19 PM

1 Jay; usual Tits inclusive of Great Blue Long Tailed; minimum 4 Nuthatch where the paths converge, many heard too - I think Boggart is a good site for that bird.
A member of the public reported a Sparrowhawk near Angel Hill but I failed to locate it.
Heard two separate Woodpeckers - one called very very briefly, the other was up the hill near the Rochdale Road entrance, and I failed to see either.



On the lake - plenty of the usual waterfowl, plus 3 Tufted Duck.

1st June.

10.00 am - 12 noon. With John Doherty.

Great to meet John for the first time and have his excellent company for a couple of hours.

In the woodlands - 2 pairs of breeding Nuthatches, 1 feeding young out of the nest and another taking food to the entrance of a nest hole and calling loudly but not seen entering (trying to entice their young out?). Several singing Blackcaps and also pretty good views of a pair feeding their young. Unseen Stock Dove heard calling, at least 1 Jay, a pair of Bullfinches, 2 Chiffchaff singing, Coal Tits feeding young, as were Great and Blue Tits. No Woodpeckers.

On/around the lakes - 2 female Mallards with 6 and 2 ducklings respectively, pair of Coot with 5 young, pair of Tufted Duck, 2 juvenile Grey Herons and a pair of Little Grebes.

Flying over - a very brief glimpse of a Sparrowhawk that looked like it was carrying prey, pair of Goldfinches and a handful of Lesser Black-backed Gulls.

Cheers,

Bill

Today from 10am-midday.

1 Mistlethrush
Sev. Song thrush, Coal Tit, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Robin and Wren.
1 Nuthatch
Plus usual suspects


On the lake: 4 Herons, 4 Tufted Ducks (2m, 2 f) lots of Coots plus young, but no Moorhen! Very aggressive bunch of Canada Geese here who follow you like a herd of cattle - people don't get it into their heads that they're not to be fed as I saw some feeding them today.

An owl called from inside the woods, but only briefly.

Half an hour down here today:

2 Treecreepers
2 Goldfinch
Robin
Bluetit
Greattit

On the lake:

1 Little Grebe
1 Great Crested Grebe
2 Coots
Moorhen
3 Herons (2 departing as I arrived, 1 coming in as I left)
C 20 Mallard
C 20 Canada

27th February.

Pm.

5 Waxwings at 4.15 pm were in same tree as the much larger flock seen here on 17/2.

One Little Grebe is now two.

Cheers,

Bill.

20th January.

On the lake - c40 Tufted Duck and 1 Little Grebe amongst the usual suspects.

In the woodlands - 1 Treecreeper, 1 Nuthatch, 1 Great Spotted Woodpecker drumming. 2 Mistle Thrush and 3 Song Thrush (2 seemingly together) and 1 singing in the distance. A pair of Carrion Crows apparently engaged in courtship activities - 1 moving along a grass verge and picking up twigs on 2 different occasions, which it then dropped, as the other one bounded closely alongside, putting its full weight into cawing loudly whilst the other was "twigging". A nice sight.

Cheers,

Bill.

I played football at BH Clough in the early Seventies and perhaps I should go back there birding.

12th November.

Early pm.

16 Goosander. I watched one for a good while trying to swallow a fish which appeared to be far too large for it to manage. In the end I was really surprised to watch as a Coot approached and took the fish away from the Goosander , which made a very half-hearted attempt to recover it but quickly gave up when the Coot "snarled" at it! The Coot then spent a few minutes pecking forcefully at the fish but eventually gave up as well.

Also - 12 Coot, 11 Tufted Duck and 1 Grey Heron.

In the surrounding woodland - 2+ Siskin, 6 Lesser Redpoll, 2 Nuthatch, 1 Treecreeper, 1 Great Spotted Woodpecker, 2 Goldcrest and 1 Jay.

Cheers,

Bill.

9th June.

Spent a good few hours this morning around the Blackley area and although I didn't visit Boggart Hole Clough, I thought it better to post details of today's sightings on this thread rather than starting a new one. I actually visited Blackley Forest and Blackley Cemetery (there is some surprisingly good wildlife habitat in and around our larger GM cemeteries!) and had a few decent sightings which I thought might be worth reporting.

2 separate family parties of Goldfinch - 1 with a single young and another with 3 begging young. I also saw my first Bullfinch young of the year - alerted to their presence by their begging calls. We all know how difficult it is to see adult Bullfinches at the best of times and when they have young they seem to be even more elusive - I briefly caught sight, after a considerable wait, of a single begging juvenile, although from the calls being made I would suspect there were at least 2.

2 juvenile Great Spotted Woodpeckers were seen and also 2 juvenile Mistle Thrush. One juvenile Mistle Thrush was remarkably bold and I watched it seemingly harassing/intimidating a male Blackbird that was collecting food. It seemed to have the ploy of getting quite close to the adult Blackbird, which then seemed to get a bit nervous and lose its "bottle" and drop the food it was carrying, which the juvenile Mistle Thrush then picked up! This happened on 2 occasions. 2 fledged Magpies were seen and 2 Cormorants flew over. 3 Goldcrest were singing in different areas and all four tit species had family parties of begging young - including Coal Tit. The variety and maturity of evergreen conifers in the cemetery seemingly provides good opportunities for both Goldcrest and Coal Tit?

Talking of Coal Tits....... this again is another species where plenty more confirmed breeding records for the current atlas projects would be most welcome! At the half way stage of the current BTO/GM 2007-2011 breeding atlas projects, breeding had been proven in just 33 of the tetrads in our recording area. At the conclusion of the our last atlas project - Breeding Birds in Greater Manchester (BBGM) - 1979 to 1983, it had been confirmed in a total of 84 tetrads......in percentage terms the current total is only 39% of the BBGM figure.....but surely this species is now more numerous than it was nearly three decades ago? Or isn't it?

In the earlier part of the year Coal Tits can sometimes be observed nest building in locations that some might regard as surprisingly close to human activity. The more easily observable nests are sometimes quite close to ground level and I watched nest building in an ornamental rockery at the edge of a quiet side road in Fairfield, Bury on 5th April and also in a stone wall around the busy entrance to a small primary school in Milnrow on 9th May! Naturally, not all nests are successful but re-visiting some of these earlier sites where nest building was observed may be rewarded with the sight of adults carrying food into the nest - use code FF for atlas purposes (adults carrying food or removing a faecal sac from the nest) - and as the young mature in the nest and approach their fledging date they can also sometimes be heard begging in the nest and breeding could be confirmed with the code NY (nest with young seen or heard). Like many species though they usually have one particular phase of their breeding cycle when it becomes a little easier to confirm breeding. Like the other tit species it is relatively easy to confirm breeding around this time of the year, when the young emerge from their nests and initially follow the adults around in tight-knit family parties and can be heard and seen begging to be fed. The young of each of our four tit species all have not too dissimilar begging calls but thankfully are sufficiently different enough to be able to pick up on the presence of the individual species concerned. Sightings of recently-fledged family parties for atlas reporting should be recorded with code FL (recently fledged young or downy young observed).

Please report all sightings for confirmed breeding for Coal Tit for the remainder of the current breeding season and also for the last breeding season (yes, we are running out of time to get the data we need!) of the current atlas projects, namely April to July inclusive 2011. These will help fill out our current atlas database and should indicate whether this species has increased or decreased (or possibly stayed at the same levels!) since BBGM. To input your records please visit http://www.bto.org/birdatlas/index.htm

Finally, please don't forget to include the relevant 2 letter confirmed breeding code - this is most important and must be input for the record to logged and to be countable!!

Cheers,


Bill.

25th January.

9.50am to 11.50am.

This morning I did my second winter timed tetrad visit (TTV) for the 2007 - 2011 BTO Atlas project for the 2km by 2 km square SD80R - which includes Boggart Hole Clough.
35 species logged - exactly the same number on my first visit on 9/11/09 - although the species recorded were not the same on both visits.

The lake at Boggart Hole was still two-thirds frozen and didn't have a great deal on the small area of open water other than - 23 Mallard, 17 Coots and 12 Tufted Duck. A single Grey Heron sat in an old nest was an early returner to the small heronry here. 4 Nuthatch were seen - including two birds singing loudly against each other. There was a small mobile flock of c12 Siskin and there were two small flocks of Redwing totalling c25 birds.

What was really noticeable was that when I did my first TTV on 9/11/09 - ie. - before the big freeze that numbers of certain species were much higher than on the visit today. For example on 9/11/09 - 18 Wrens were logged in a 2 hour visit and just 3 today. For Robin - 27 logged on 9/11/09 and just 5 today. Goldcrest is usually guaranteed in one area of the park but there was no sight or sound today. The same route was taken on both visits and although it is not wise to draw conclusions from 2 short snapshot surveys, it was all too depressingly and worryingly quiet. Also makes estimating population levels of some species occupying the square a little difficult!


Keep atlasing!

Bill.

17th November.

11 Goosander (2 males),
c10 Siskin,
3 Mistle Thrush - 1 trying to defend a hawthorn tree from several Blackbirds,
1 Treecreeper,
1 Jay,
2 Bullfinch,
4 Tufted Duck,
1 Grey Wagtail.

Very, very pleased to see signs up around the lake asking members of the public not to feed bread to the Canada Geese. There is no doubt this species is a major nuisance here - I counted 19 nests around the lake on 24th April 2008 and there was a creche of at least 31 goslings of varying sizes seen on 21st May '08. Most of the reasons given for not feeding the geese seemed more than fair enough - severe disturbance to other nesting waterbirds, the mess they make etc but also because apparently they "snap off the heads of baby ducks"

Bill.

-- Edited by Bill Myerscough at 18:43, 2008-11-17

Hi Bill,
You are almost certainly not imagining hearing Siskins. Two flew over the car park at Watergrove yesterday evening, identified on call, heading north-east. There is clearly some movement taking place at the moment as a Brambling was seen in the plantations on Sat a.m. and possibly up to 8 flew north high up last Friday. Only one was positively identified on flight call.
First Wheatear (a pair) of the year at Watergrove on Monday and first Swallow today.

Steve

25th February.

In addition to the species already noted on previous visits - 1 Grey Wagtail and 2 Bullfinch.

1 Great Spotted Woodpecker drumming, a Sparrowhawk and mixed flock of c 40 birds - Siskins and Lesser Redpolls.

Cheers,

Bill.

8th February 2008.

Plenty of birds in this park on this spring-like morning

A mixed flock of c110 small finches feeding on alder cones contained - c90 Siskin, c15 Lesser Redpoll and c5 Goldfinch .

Also c20 Redwing and a Sparrowhawk. Tufted Duck had increased to 12 and Grey Heron to 13.

5 Common Gulls were with the Black-headed Gulls.

Again plenty of birds in song - 3 Chaffinches - first I have heard in G.M. this spring. 3 Goldcrest seen - 1 in song.

2, almost certainly 3 Nuthatches were "duelling" in song from the tree tops in the mature woodland. 3 Coal Tits singing.

Icing on the was the best views I have ever had of a Weasel!


Cheers,


Bill.

-- Edited by Bill Myerscough at 19:28, 2008-02-08