A moment with a small pipit

Sunday 9 June 2019

Dave Steel

David Steel has been recording birds – and other wildlife on the Manchester Mosslands ever since he was a child. Dave knows every nook and cranny, and he sees the area as his own. Dave often leads guided walks on the mosses and his blogs capture his

Meadow pipit by Dave Steel

After the rain, the sun shone today and provided Dave Steel with a lovely encounter on Day 9 of 30 Days Wild.

Then along came the sun to light the way and at a, not too unreasonable, 0630 start this wander was set to erase the memory of yesterday’s almost Biblical amounts of rain. I must admit that day had quite a special moment of wild with the snatched views of the barn owls.

A goldcrest tested my hearing as this minuscule bird sang from the cover of a stand of conifers that lie just outside the Little Woolden Moss reserve as i parked my car. A garden warbler competed with a blackcap for first place in their own the voice competition.

Both stayed out of view and I was beginning to think that this was to be a scenery illustrated note rather than one which managed to capture any wildlife images.

A flock of swift wasted no time in taking skyborne insects, whilst a trio of oystercatcher piped their far-carrying calls to almost every corner of the moss. A young pied wagtail just got on with insect catching.

Willow warbler issued their sweet “huweet” alarm calls to their hidden young as I passed by their discreetly placed nests. The return of these birds from Africa pays off their migratory gamble to take advantage of our longer days in which to search for insects.

The wild was to be a simple series of set pieces for today so it seemed but then along came a recently fledged meadow pipit, as if wafting upon a subtle breeze of life. It had its own moment of wild as it puzzled as to what exactly I was!

We shared a few minutes of one another’s company, me with camera relieved that it had a wild image to capture, whilst the pipit found me not to be a threat. I wished it well in its future encounters in a world which may offer other than admiration.