Pittswood Birds

A grey blanket of cloud was slowly working its way across the sky this morning, like someone pulling a giant pair of curtains from horizon to horizon until the sunlight was gone. This meant the first half hour of the day was the only sunshine I saw, after that it was rain, sleet and snow!

Yesterdays walk was the poorest of the year, it now ranks as the second poorest, as today was even worse! The total species seen today was one less than yesterday at 38, and trying to find any hightlights from the list is quite difficult.

There was a gathering of FIELDFARE and REDWING at every open field, and large garden lawn I passed, the biggest flocks were at Migrant Alley, where they numbered 200+. One of the fields adjacent to the west end of Ashes lane had around 75 BLACK HEADED GULLS and two COMMON GULLS, the third Gull species seen - HERRING GULL, that flew over, helped pack out the daylist a bit!

Other bits and pieces were a pair of GOLDCREST that were seen early on in the Tree Nursery, but none were seen elsewhere on my patch, a TREECREEPER and NUTHATCH were located in the wet woods, where a SPARROWHAWK whizzed through, 3 male and 2 female BULLFINCH were around the Greenhouse Complex, feeding amongst the old raspberry canes and 48 LINNETS were counted leaving their roost site, just as it got light. Thats about the extent of it today - very poor!

Above and below the sunrise - about to be extinguished by the encroaching cloud

Below you can see the last of the clear sky, with the grey veil of cloud above it.

Below is the overgrown drainage ditch that runs across the tree nursery, I always walk along it, the wet undergrowth always looks good for a Snipe.

Below is the Lake, it was iced over, and not a bird was seen on it or on the edges of it, Just look at the difference in the light level, from the above photo, which was taken two hours earlier!