Wednesday 30 October 2019

Sandbach Flash :: 28 October 2019

Visiting our youngest at Keele University for a couple of days. We woke on our first morning and looked outside - we were surprised to see a significant mist. Oh, what the hell ... we decided to head off to Sandbach Flash anyway. We had encountered several flooded roads on the previous day, including some three feet deep - today was no different. We had a couple of diversions on the way and, as we got to Clay Lane, we came across a rather large pool on the road. Not knowing where the air intake is on my car I opted for caution, taking a rather long route around and thankfully got to our destination from the other side without major incident. As we looked back we could see a BMW trapped in the middle - god that was lucky.

Due to the diversions we were running over 30 minutes later than we had planned, so we didn't have much time on-site. The mist was also against us and lay heavy on the water. A few gulls on the water but nothing of note. Wigeon, teal, mallard, Canada geese and coot moved around leisurely. The water was so high that there would be few waders wanting to show. Across the road we saw great-spotted woodpecker and as Charlotte went for a wander I watched a single goldcrest. On the opposite side of the road we set up the scope and found half a dozen curlew on the waters edge.

GoldcrestJust as we were packing our stuff back into the car, the sun started to break through - bugger. Not much you can do when the weather doesn't play nice.

More diversions and road closures on our way back to pick up Ailsa so ended up taking twice as long to get back too. Racking up the miles and the car covered in mud. It was turning into a nice day though ... off for lunch.

Sightings (27) included: black-headed gull, blackbird, blue tit, canada goose, carrion crow, coot, curlew, dunnock, goldcrest, great spotted woodpecker, great tit, greenfinch, jackdaw, lapwing, lesser black-backed gull, little grebe, long-tailed tit, magpie, mallard, mute swan, pheasant, robin, rook, teal, wigeon, woodpigeon and wren.

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