Pittswood Birds

A very different morning this morning, heavy dark clouds hung in the sky, and the wind brought in pulses of drizzly rain. Most all of the visiting birds seen yesterday had gone, and not a Gull was seen in the sky, very unusual.

There was still some part of the feeding flock in the College Grounds, though much reduced, just 3-4 SPOTTED FLYCATCHERS, a minimum of 3 GOLDCREST, plus a few BLUE and GREAT TITS.

I had walked Migrant Alley earlier to get to the College Grounds and seen no sign of any Whinchat, but typically a KESTREL was seen, could of done with that yesteday, anyway, walking back through Migrant Alley on the return route I once again discovered a WHINCHAT, was this one of the two seen yesterday, or a new one arrived ? I wonder! A last scan of the fields and paddocks before leaving had me finding a TURTLE DOVE sitting on the power lines, I hope one or two stick around for the September list :-)

Over at the lakeside scrub just a few remnants of yesterdays mass bird invasion were left, these were all found in one Elder tree, made up of 3 BLACKCAPS and a GARDEN WARBLER, the latter is always a treat on my patch though.

That was about it for the morning visit, apart from meeting a SPARROWHAWK on the footpath on the way back home, I disturbed her as she was devouring a COLLARED DOVE, most of it was finshed up anyway :-)

Considering the conditions this morning, the daylist of 42 species wasn't too bad, Whinchat and Turtle Dove are always great birds to see.

I had an afternoon visit around 13:30hrs, over to the paddocks at Migant Alley, where I refound the Whinchat, and added BLACK HEADED and HERRING GULL to the daylist, as well as 4 WHITETHROATS in the Greenhouse Complex grounds, I didn't see a sign of one this morning! A dull hours skywatch was brightened up when I scanned the fencelines again, and found that there were two WHINCHATS, at least one of them must be a new bird! This year is going down as the best ever for Whinchat passage, and we've not got to September yet.

The only photo's taken today were of the GREENFINCH'S in my garden. There were at least 45 on the feeders!

There are 11 on/around the feeder, and another 11 below it, with 6 on the smaller feeder and even more in the Elder tree, more still were drinking from the ponds