Birch heywood Middleton border 17/4

117 nests counted this afternoon

-- Edited by Mike Cooper on Sunday 17th of April 2016 05:01:41 PM

St Johns Shuttleworth.

Fourty one nests constructed or under construction, between 28 and 32 appear to be in use, with several sitting birds.

Fifty three birds seen in and around the area.

 

Regards Brian.

A 5th nest under construction on Blossoms Lane opposite Church Lane Flood, Woodford.

Cheers, John

24 nests in the Bradshaw Road copse above Jumbles CP, next to the track to Toye Farm.

Irlam Road, Flixton rookery, outside Wellacre College is now 4 nests strong.

17.30
Birds back at the small rookery outside Wellacre School, Flixton with a count of 8 birds at 3 nests.

19 nests on the Mottram/ Broadbottom parish border at the bottom of Hillend Lane. 26 there in 2013.

It appears that many rookeries throughout GM are declining in numbers. A far cry from the 1960s when I knew of at least 7 rookeries in the Hyde/Longdendale area alone, many of them very large ones.

Birtle - Harwood Fields
24 nests as of today

Cutgate (Norden)
4 nests on Meadow View adjacent Tesco Express. A new site to my knowledge

7 nests outside Wellacre School in Flixton. 2 birds seen collecting sticks from the ground around the nesting trees.

4 nests in Beech trees at the front of Edmund Arrowsmith High School, Ashton-in-Makerfield, the first time I've noticed any nests there, though birds regularly feed on the field. Less than half a mile from the Holiday Inn rookery just over the St Helens border. Interestingly, they are next to a cul-de-sac called Rookery Avenue, probably early to mid-20th century. Don't know when the Rookery referred to was last there?

-- Edited by dave broome on Monday 30th of March 2015 10:12:15 PM

Checked out Tyldesley cemetery Rookery today.
~ 12-13 occupied nest, a 50% decline from my 2010 count.
Other birds of note included a very active pair of G.S.Woodpeckers & Nuthatches
and a pair of nesting Mistle Thrushes.
Cheers
Ian

Wolstenholme, Norden - c 20 nests this morning

Birtle rookery now has fourteen nests,nineteen last year. There are a further twenty nests approx quarter mile away where there have been none previously. Does anyone know if this is an extension to the existing or a new rookery?s

Just out of interest but we appear to have increased our Flixton rookery size this year.
There are 4 nests in a tree opposite the Railway Tavern on Irlam Road and 4 nests in a tree on the southern edge of Woodsend Park, which is a few hundred metres from the other tree, as the Rook flies.

Birtle rookery started two years ago with 14 nests,last year 21 nests,this year 19 nests.I suppose rookeries wax and wane over the years.

24th April. 2013.

Hollingworth. Gun Inn traffic lights.

Accurate count.

22 nests + 5 still building. Another 8 nests about 100 yds away, farther round the trees. Therefore 35 nests in total.

Roger.

There was also a small rookery of around 20 - 30 nests at the bottom of the village in the grounds of Broadbottom Hall, but this has long gone.
The Jackdaws are still there although many have moved onto the viaduct to nest.

The Broadbottom/Mottram area has lost a lot of species since those days -- Yellowhammers, Grey Partridge, Yellow Wagtails, Cuckoos, Tree Sparrows, Common Snipe etc no longer breed. Besides the rookery, Broadbottom had huge numbers of breeding Swift which have more or less disappeared with the addition of dormer bedrooms on many of the stone terraces. The Lapwings and Skylarks have gone from the Mudd at Mottram has indeed have Redstarts from Bothams Hall Wood (Great Wood) although perhaps an odd pair may still breed there.
Sadly its not just birds the last wild flower meadow was built on a few years ago.

I remember the gamekeeper at The Keg, having once been the recipient of the salt pellets ( would have been at least a good £50,000 compensation these days!) and fell into the river about half an hour later - an interesting sort of day.

I counted c27 active nests at the bottom of Hill End Lane on the Broadbottom/Mottram parish boundary yesterday. The nests are on both sides of the Mottram/Broadbottom road.

There used to be a huge rookery at Broadbottom that was counted in the late 1950s by a local as 1500+ nests. It stretched from the wood at the back of Broadbottom cricket field all the way to the start of the village proper at Market Street. It used to be quite a sight when all the birds flew up at once during a "dread". It used to be even bigger from what older people in the village told me as there used to be many pairs that nested on the opposite side of the railway but were persuaded to "move on" following complaints from railway passengers. I have never seen a rookery anywhere approaching the size of the Broadbottom one anywhere in Britain.
In 1944/1945 the Ministry of Agriculture did a rookery census over many parts of Britain including Cheshire (Broadbottom of course being in Cheshire at the time). They must have missed Broadbottom as the full results for Cheshire showed only 390 nests as the largest rookery in the county!(at Swettenham)
Numbers began to fall rapidly from the early 1960s until by the late 1970s there was probably only around 250 pairs. The final straw was when houses were built inside the wood after many trees were cut down.
However a few hung on at the top of the wood where I counted 35 nests only, a few years ago. The wood has recently been abandoned so I assume that the current rookery are birds from there, as it is only a few hundred yards away.

All 8 nests occupied at 1910hrs in the Delph rookery

Near Stockport Schoo, Great Moorl on the A6.

c19 nests counted as I drove slowly by in traffic jam.

Cheers, John

I went to check the rookery on Bradshaw Road, Bolton, this morning to find nearly as many wagons as nests as they were doing road resurfacing at the the very spot. On my way back from Hawkshaw I tried to count the nests from the track to Toye Farm, and estimated between 12 & 15 nests.

Around Woodsend Park, Flixton, we usually have 20-30 Rooks wintering and there is at present, a small rookery of 5 nests in 1 tree, on the south side of the park.

Rookeries ? You're lucky, just 1 Rook would do us on Salford Quays, where it is an absolute mega (don't think there has ever been a record!)

30+ Hollingworth Near the Gun Inn