The 10km Circle - patch birding in Manchester

 

Probably 90% of my birding is done within 10km of home.  When I returned to birding in 2020 during the pandemic I quickly realised that my local knowledge of where to go and what I might see was hopelessly out of date.  I set out to explore the area for myself, but even in an urban location like mine, there are so many little hidden areas of natural colonisation and habitat that it was unrealistic that I would be able to find even the majority of them within a reasonable timeframe.  

I've come to realise that it is so important to build local knowledge as a birder - I often think about the apocryphal story of how bank tellers are trained to recognise counterfeit money.  They are not exposed to any fake notes at all, until they are so familiar with the real bills that any odd ones that don't fit in just feel wrong.  This is sort of analogous to birding.  Seeing a thousand Meadow Pipits is great training to find that little brown job that just isn't a Meadow Pipit.  I was always amazed when people could pick out a rare bird almost on a hunch from the tiniest view.  I used to suspect that I was missing some sort of eyesight miracle that allowed people to see more than me, but in reality, those amazing birders that pick up multiple finds are just so used to what fits in their patch, that anything that feels just a little out of place stands out to them immediately.  This skill is cultivated in the field, on patch, with repetition.

So of course, the first place I went to discover information was the internet.  Tools like Ebird are useful as far as they go: they depend on the user knowing what they're seeing, being able to input accurately, and then the other end user deciphering international bird names and quirky placement of pins in maps.  This meant that, as a solo birder with no local context and only vague memories of what I used to see in the area, it could be quite frustrating to arrive at a place and find no access, or that a permit is required, or worse, that I'd read the map wrong and was "lost" within 3 miles of my front door!

There were some really useful tools in my quest.  The best of them was the Manchester Birding website SITE GUIDES - ​Manchester Birding,  administrated by Ian McKerchar, GM county recorder.  The section on there giving tips on where to search for birds, especially in the complex environment of the Mosses, was invaluable and the sightings page has been a constant help for the past five years for me.  My focus on the west of Manchester across the Wigan/Salford/Bolton borders has meant that I have spent a lot of time in some (relatively) rich environments and been surprised by the biodiversity to be found here.  There are some species here which I routinely see that people as far away as Cambridgeshire and Somerset get in touch to ask about; Willow Tit and various owl species, that seem to be - if not thriving - then coping locally with the environmental disaster we are causing.  It's a rare evening of birding where I don't encounter at least two species of owls, and not that uncommon to see four.  It's not exactly Spurn, but it does have its own attractions.

The area is distinctly unglamorous, lacking rare migration most years, landlocked and certainly in my 10km circle, only having very disturbed large water bodies, eg Pennington Flash.  However, it does have a really good base range of breeding and visiting species, and on any given day across the area I would be expecting to see between 50 and 85 species of birds.  

I spent the year in 2020 visiting as many sites as I possibly could, gaining information from local birders, forum, ebird and using as detailed an OS map as I could access to try and find likely spots for myself. As a key worker, I would be in working with vulnerable people 9am-1pm, and then on the drive home would go to a birding location and sit in the car to unwind from the very real stresses of seeing people seriously sick and families affected by Covid.  Once the lockdown restrictions were eased, I would use my outdoor exercise time to explore each location.  Having identified around 40 places worth a visit, I did it the hard way, and visited every site in every season for the year.  This was a lot of hard work, and in the end led to the obvious conclusion: that far more experienced birders than me had already figured that a lot of these sites were in the orbit of a bigger site and could be reasonably checked during a visit. 

Over the last half a decade, I have narrowed my regular haunts down to four main areas, if not specific locations.  

To the north at Burnt Edge in Horwich, Bolton I have my only patch of upland moorland.  Red Grouse, Golden Plover, Curlew, Cuckoo, Siskin, Crossbill, Tree Pipit, Raven, migrating flycatchers, Green Woodpecker (a real difficult bird to connect with here) are all present (though often hard to find) in this area.  A spring and autumn migration location, Burnt Edge can be utterly silent in winter.

More central is Cutacre CP, industrial spoil land cultivated into a green space, and on the verge of either becoming an important habitat or being completely destroyed by developers.  Willow Tit, Skylark, Lesser Whitethroat, Gadwall, Sedge Warbler, Grasshopper Warbler and lots of raptors favour this area, and the odd scarce bird appears on Swan Lake or surrounds (Bittern, Garganey, Hooded Crow in the last year).  Best early in the morning or last thing in the evening to avoid the hundreds of dogs walked off lead here.

To the south west is Pennington Flash, the most famous of the sites in the area not least because in March and April 1994 Britain's first Black Faced Bunting spent time on site.  The money raised by visiting birders paid for the Bunting Hide, where Willow Tit, Bullfinch, Nuthatch and plenty other species are fed daily, though this hide is often completely full of photographers, especially on sunny days.  This is the biggest water body for miles, and attracts most of the scarce birds in the area, and is also the most watched location possibly in the west of the county.  Waders (recent Temminck's Stint), terns, grebes (including dispersing Black-necked Grebes from nearby Woolston Eyes), and the occasional rarity are to be found, along with wintering Bittern and falls of Common Scoter on their transPennine migration.  Hugely disturbed by dog walking, park runs, teenage hijinks, boating etc, it's best early morning or at gull roost in winter afternoons, or when lifting fog and drizzle has brought birds down to rest.

Directly south, and extending across a wide swath of the 10km circle are the Mosses.  An industrial, agricultural landscape of peat harvesting, carrot, potato and other crop growing, this area is threaded with probably the best continuous habitat in the whole circle, though it is always under threat and can feel very empty on bad days.  Within the Mosses, Astley Moss and Little Woolden Moss are designated as nature reserves or conservation areas, and of these, LWM is the more accessible - though still not easy to get to given the perilous state of the roads and almost non-existent parking.  A noticeable increase in insect life compared to the rest of the 10km circle means that much of the summer migration is focused here.  Cuckoo, Yellow Wagtail, 9 species of warbler, Hobby, Marsh Harrier and the last remaining farmland birds in the 10k are here, Yellowhammer, rare Corn Bunting, and a tiny population of Tree Sparrows.  In winter this is a place to see Merlin if you're patient, and on passage Wood Sandpiper, Whimbrel and in recent years brief stays of Black-winged Stilt.  Green-winged Teal lingered all winter and last year saw a twitch for the first Greenland Whitefronts to land in Manchester in some years.  This year alone I've found Bee-eater, Crane and Channel Wagtail on the Mosses.  Bleak in winter, beautiful in spring, and a biting insect nightmare in summer, the Moss is my favourite place to wander when the sun is shining.

Though I'm in the midst of a Big Year, and I enjoy birding in distant corners of the UK, this is where the majority of my time is spent.  My mantra whenever I'm birding elsewhere is "local knowledge is best", and I always go out of my way to talk to birders on their patches because there is so much to learn.  Manchester is where I learned my love of birds, and where I search every week just to see what's living in the green spaces in the west of the county.