Pittswood Birds

I thought the weather was meant to improve today, however as I left for my full patch walk this morning it was cold, and drizzling, with the odd flake of snow.

I was out for 3 hours today, and recorded 41 species, 7 of those were not seen yesterday, the first being a pair of GREY LAG GEESE that flew over Migrant Alley early on, the KESTREL was back hunting over the Greenhouse Complex and another was hunting over the lakeside scrub, as was a SPARROWHAWK, neither of these species turned up yesterday. A field of grass just off the west end of ashes lane had 32 BLACK HEADED GULLS on it and with them was the fourth species that was not seen yesterday - 3 COMMON GULLS, a good number for my patch, another Gull species, LESSER BLACK BACKED was seen flying over, not had one of these since the 7th.

A good number of finch's were feeding in an alpaca enclosure, adjacent the small holding, in all around 40 GREENFINCH, 18 CHAFFINCH, and 9 GOLDFINCH were feeding on the floor, they were probably eating the seeds of the Hornbeam trees which overhang the enclosure. It was interesting to see a flock of BLUE TITS with them, I counted 24, strange to see bunches of Blue Tits feeding from the floor! Whilst watching this lot, a STOCK DOVE flew from one of the nearby pear trees - didn't see one of those yesterday, and a little further on a PIED WAGTAIL was seen, the final species from this morning that didn't show yesterday.

On the lake I was disappointed not to see the Tufted Duck, I thought it may have stayed the night, but no, so it was back to watching the MALLARDS, CANADA GEESE and MOORHENS!

Another short 40 min trip out to the Lake area was had this afternoon, and I found a few more species that weren't picked up this morning, LONG TAILED TIT, COAL TIT and NUTHATCH all were found as I passed through the Wet Woods, as well as two SISKIN in a Pine tree situated on the bank of the lake, where were they yesterday ? I decided I would check out the top lake again, just to make sure nothing had dropped in since this mornings visit, it had, but it was only 3 Greylag geese and 7 more Canada Geese, as I walked back past the main lake I saw an odd looking duck out in the middle of the water, I raised my bins and was pleased to find it was a drake MANDARIN DUCK (69 57) Yes! Another good species for the year list, it took me until the 2nd of November last year to get the only sighting of this colourful Duck, when 3 turned up. Not as rare as the Tufty, or the Coot in fact, but still a difficult species to find on the patch lakes!

At the end of the day I had a good tally of 46 species, 9 that were not seen yesterday. Over the two days, a total of 49 species was recorded, so things are definitely looking up!

Above: A GREEN WOODPECKER, this one was on the college sports pitch

Above: A FIELDFARE, plenty of them about today, but they will soon be off north to breed.

Above: The drake mandarin duck - nice!

Today I managed to pick my new Camera and lens up -a Canon 50D with a 70 -300 stabilized zoom lens. I took a couple of garden pics just to check it all worked ok, and it does!

Above: GREENFINCH and Below: GOLDFINCH.