Chester Road Canalside Walk.

I thought it was about time I had a walk again down a stretch of one of many of Birmingham's canals, we might have more canals in Brum than in Venice but theirs are not strewn with shopping trolleys and all the other various crap people think it's okay to dump in our waterways. People in Birmingham or anyone near canals for that matter seem to overlook canals even though they have a rich habitat for waterfowl, birds and wildlife in general, saying that I didn't expect to find what I did in the canal, I saw what I thought was a Coot nest even though it was floating on the water, when I got closer it was obvious that it wasn't a nest but there was plastic tubing and string interwoven in it, so I bent down to remove the tubing etc. then I got an overpowering, unmistakable whiff of cannabis, so I decided to fish it out the water and there was easily four kilograms of the stuff, which I decided to put in the undergrowth further down the canal, it did cross my mind to tell the Police but what with the many questions I would have to have dealt with, I couldn't be bothered. Anyway back to the purpose of today's visit, birdwatching, birds spotted were, House Martin, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Long Tailed Tit, Goldfinch, House Sparrow, Dunnock, Robin, Starling, Collared Dove, Blackbird, Song Thrush, Carrion Crow, Magpie, Woodpigeon, Feral Pigeon, Moorhen, Coot, Canada Goose and Mallard along with the following chicks/juvenile birds, Gosling (4) Long Tailed Tit, Starling and Robin. It was great to see Starlings all along the walk there and back, including two adult Starling feeding some hungry chicks in a hole in an apex of one of the factories adjacent to the canal, the adults were back and forth continuously feeding the hungry chicks some fresh worms. But it wasn't good to see a dead Kestrel in the canal, I fished it out of the canal but it had suffered heavy decomposition, I could only tell it was Kestrel by the size and feathers, so again I left it in amongst some undergrowth. Today's walk was from the The Tyburn House public house up to the The Boat Inn public house and back to the Tyburn again, next time we'll park up at The Boat Inn and carry on our walk from there and see were we end up, it's a bit more into open countryside so I might see some different varieties of birds and more wildlife.