Quays are now fit for a queen

SALFORD Quays were thrust into the national spotlight when The Queen officially opened the Lowry Centre.

Not many people realise that this site a few years ago was derelict and something of a health risk. The waters of the Manchester Ship Canal were foul and stinking.

Not only is the Lowry Centre in this area, but also nearby is Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United.

Next year a museum built by the Imperial War Museum will be situated on the canal bank.

In 2002 the Commonwealth Games Triatholon event will be held in this area.

You cannot host tourist hot spots in areas which stink and therefore a detailed study of the wildlife of the canal needs to be made.

I spoke to several anglers who showed me impressive catches of roach, perch and dace.

Swans were swimming gracefully alongside the Lowry. I thought it quite fitting that the royal bird should have been there to greet the monarch.

The wildlife around our canals is improving all the time as Heather Harrison's letter of the week clearly shows.

I am at present working with British Waterways to build up a list of the fauna and flora of the Leeds and Liverpool canal.

Other areas which need some study are the old mill lodges and the reservoirs of our areas.

Hardly any of our British countryside has been left as nature intended, but our wildlife is very adaptable.

The presence of reservoirs among our wild moorlands has been of benefit to the waders and wildfowl.

Our canals act like a green finger pushing right into our town centres.

The Lowry is a perfect example of nature's resilience and as we head into the next century things are quite likely to get even better.

A narrow squeak

I AM at last catching up on the sightings of local wildlife recorded by my readers. Heather Harrison's letter featuring the vole and the pussycat is a 'spy' column on its own and her records are all in the centre of Burnley, which is a remarkable list. Heather, of Westgate, Burnley, writes:

ONE short-tailed vole may have as many lives as our cats! Late one evening I was reading in the dining room when I heard several high pitched short squeaks.

I called for my husband who thought I was hearing things! He checked our outhouse just in time to see a flash of brown fur being pursued by our two younger cats, one of which must have brought the vole in through the cat-flap, as there is no other access. Catching it in a basin, he brought it into the kitchen and I rushed for my camera, as I had never seen a vole before. Its undersides were almost white, and it had small black eyes and a short tail.

As I focused the camera the vole sat up on its hind legs and washed its face with its front paws. We removed the glass dish covering it and it remained totally oblivious to our attention. I was able to take several more photographs outside before letting it go.

On a recent walk along the canal bank at the back of our home, I counted all the varieties of wildflowers and grasses that grew along the banks, 57 in all, including six that I could not identify.

This is the list, including some that have not been mentioned in your column yet: Birds-foot-trefoil, bramble, broadleaved willow-herb, bugle, charlock, chickweed, cleavers, cow parsley, daisy, dandelion, fat hen, feverfew, field scabious (top of Wiseman Street), great willow-herb, groundsel hedge woundwort, herb robert, honeysuckle, hop trefoil, hogweed, Indian balsam, ivy, knapweed, ladies bedstraw, lesser trefoil, ox-eye daisy, pineapple weed, prickly sowthistle, ragwort, red clover, ribwort plantain, rosebay willow-herb, rough chervil, sainfoin, salad burnet, selfheal, sheep's sorrel, shepherd's purse, smooth hawksbeard, spear thistle, stinging nettle, teasel, tufted vetch, white clover, yarrow (pink and white), and six differing grasses. All these in the space of a few hundred yards!

Other Nature Spy sightings

I ALWAYS love to hear from young people, and four-year Jade Williams, from Oswaldtwistle, reports: "Last Sunday me and my grandpa saw some red admiral butterflies on our butterfly bush. Then a very beautiful one came -- it was a peacock butterfly. On the lamp-post across the road there were two doves (collared) and a bit later we saw a coal tit on the nut bag."

Bernard Lee, of Burnley, has recorded a young hobby and a mature honey buzzard in East Lancashire. These are both fantastic records for our area.

Mark Glasgow, of Clitheroe, also recorded his first fieldfare on October 6, the same day that he spotted three swallows near Chatburn. Can any reader remember an earlier fieldfare or a later swallow. Did you see a cuckoo this year and if so where Mark asks and also have you a record of a swift later than September 10?