Pittswood Birds

Speckled Wood butterfly

This afternoon, after work, I decided I would go and check the lakeside scrub in the hope of finding one of the last two regular migrant species that can be expected on my patch, the one I was searching for here was the Garden warbler, I may just find one this week, but it's generally early in May that they appear, with the mean arrival date being the 5th May.

Once in the scrubby area I sat and listened, a TURTLE DOVE sang, and the CUCKOO was active in the locality, singing from various prominent perches, BLACKCAPS seemed to be in every clump of bramble, but CHIFFCHAFFS have quietened down considerably, maybe its just that they sing better in the mornings :-) WREN, ROBIN, DUNNOCK, BLACKBIRD and SONGTHRUSH all gave some song, as did a GOLDCREST and a TREECREEPER, ive not heard the latter sing for a couple of weeks now.

After an hour I had not heard the Garden warbler or for that matter the Nightingale that was heard on saturday, so I had a quick look around the area, hoping to maybe 'bump' into one, but it didn't happen.

Next stop was Migrant Alley, where the usual suspects were to be found, WOODPIGEONS, JACKDAWS, CARRION CROWS and ROOKS all fed together on the paddocks, with a few PIED WAGTAILS running about between them. A flock of 23 LINNETS were on the footpath that crosses the paddocks, and two YELLOWHAMMERS were on the manure pile at the end of the paddocks. A 40 min skywatch only produced a GREY HERON, the dozen or so local SWALLOWS, a single HOUSE MARTIN and nine HERRING GULL that were making a real racket, which means only one thing, they are onto a Raptor, I scanned the sky around the Gulls and found two BUZZARDS, I thought I was going to get and Osprey or a Marsh harrrier, but I musn't complain Buzzards are good as well :-)

Not much else to report - same again tomorrow!