Pittswood Birds

I did a bit of window watching last evening, looking over the fields in front of the house and scanning the sky. I was hoping for a flyover wader - well you never know! I didn't see one of course, but the KESTREL came out to hunt around the greenhouses and adjacent fields.

This morning I again found the SPOTTED FLYCATCHERS, and they seemed very busy and vocal, but I still havn't seen any young yet - fingers crossed for these decreasing little migrants.

Back to this afternoon and the weather has lurched from one extreme to another, this time last week there was a heatwave beginning, today it was 70F in the short lived sunny spells, and much cooler in the gale force wind and hefty thundery showers that rattled through!
Trying to hear anything against the roar of the wind blown tree's was a waste of time, so I thought i'd spend a couple of hours scanning the sky and fields at Migrant Alley. A Hobby, Buzzard or a sighting of the local Peregrine would be nice for the months list, but it was tough going and none of them showed. There was a lot of SWIFT activity noticed, scores of them were feeding up high, maybe it was less windy up there, A couple of LESSER BLACK BACKED GULLS and HERRING GULLS flew south, but the only raptors seen were way off my patch, a probable Buzzard, sparrrowhawk and Kestrel were all maybe seen, very distantly!
A little bit of success came in the form of a CORMORANT, another one for the July list, it went over heading north. After 90 mins I decided that I had been windblown enough, so I went up along the scrub at the end of the fields, it wasn't much better there! However in a small, out of the wind area I found my first Gatekeeper Butterfly, a little bit more success! It all counts on a ropey old day like today!

No pics today, I left the camera at home, no chance of photo's in this weather.