Pittswood Birds

This afternoons patch walk drew a blank on just about everything, no Butterflies, no Damselflies, and only the most common Migrant and resident bird species were seen. It's may for god's sake, the woods and fields should be kicking with activity, I even saw that the May tree (hawthorn) flowers are still in bud, it will be June at this rate before they flower.

So is it me being miserable ( probably!) or is it a particularly bad May ? Well I can easily find out! I can go back to my blog posts of May 13th for 2008 and 2009.

13th of May 2008.

Ha! I had man flu - good start :-) , but I was seeing Damselflies, and Beautiful demoiselles, and the Spotted Flycatchers had arrived. Although the weather looked cool with a northerly wind, it was short lived, the Maize crop at Migrant Alley was already sprouting - this years is still to germinate. Also the first cut of Silage had taken place, that seems some way off this spring looking at the field today.

So although the weather was pretty cool, 2008 was well ahead of this year.

13th of may 2009

Can you beieve it - I had man flu again :-) I had reported it being as 'dire' and barely light, and as in this spring the Spotted Flycatchers had yet to arrive ( they came the next day ). The day before I had recorded Broad Bodied Chaser and large Red damselfly.

So what can I conclude from these retrospective posts ? Looks like i'm due for a bout of man flu :-) :-)

But being serious, it seems that although this year is a little behind schedule, I am as usual being impatient, the weather had it's bad moments in the last two May months, so it is me just being miserable :-)

On the bright side looking at the latter half of both May 2008 and 2009, there was a lot to see!


Back to this afternoon, and I thought i'd show you the handywork of the Tree Surgeons working in the large garden by the lakes. Below is how they think an Oak tree should be, stripped of all it's limbs until 2 thirds of the way up, then left with a small canopy right at the top.
There are at least 70 more Oak Trees ( you can see some in the background) if they do this too all of them the place will look like one of those pictures of a wood from a first world war battlefield. VANDALISM!!