Pittswood Birds

At last the wind had dropped, and birding was alot easier this morning. I left at 06:30 and by 07:45 I had racked up 41 species and wasn't even half way round my patch. A new species for the month, MANDARIN DUCK was added, when 3 flew low over the golf course, all looked well for a good days birding............... Then it started to snow, and everything went quiet. I kept on going and managed to finish the circuit, but the snow got everywhere, and my binoculars were soon of not much use to me.
Some good birds were recorded, LONG TAILED TITS were collecting feathers for their nests, GOLDCREST, TREECREEPER, and NUTHATCH all were seen well. A GREY HERON on the lake was the first for a while, and a GREY WAGTAIL was seen. 6 TEAL flew from the waterfilled ditch, which was now quite full from all the run off water from the small greenhouse complex.Migrant alley had at least 250 FIELDFARE, but it was again hard to count them in the snowy conditions, HERRING GULLS flew over in small groups, and 23 BLACK HEADED GULL were among the lambs on the pasture with 2 COMMON GULLS. A SPARROWHAWK flew over looking for an easy meal, scattering everything up, but it did allow me to see the 8 STOCK DOVES that I'd missed hiding on the manured field.
Last week I was looking at wheatear in these fields, in warm sunshine, today was the most winter had throw at us all season, such is the british spring!