Pittswood Birds

Another four hour full patch walk, the last one this month, took place in dark and dingy conditions, with a cold NW wind thrown in. I soon realised that I was not going to find anything new for the months list, as I was struggling even to find the most common resident birds!

As the chances of finding a migrant species decreases over at Migrant Alley, I start to turn my attentions to the Wet Woods, Lakes and Scrub area, and today I visited that part of my patch first. It was a dismal change of tactics, as I recorded just 11 species before reaching the lake, where I didn't fair much better, and by the time I left I had just 18 species in the notebook, NUTHATCH, GOLDCREST and CHIFFCHAFF being the best of those.

The cold wind was more noticeable out on the Pasture and paddocks of Migrant Alley, but still a few SWALLOWS were hunting what insects could be found, 30-35 MEADOW PIPITS were in amongst the sheep, as well as 5 PIED WAGTAILS, 8 LINNETS and the usual mixture of Corvids on the paddocks. HOUSE MARTIN passage was pretty active, with various sized groups going over heading West, but the bird of the day goes to the SNIPE that flew in from the east, it tried to land in the ditch that runs along the NW border of my patch, but was seen off by the ROOKS, I wonder why they didn't like it ? This is the second Snipe to visit this month, a real scarce bird for my patch, so I was pleased to find it.

The only other noteworthy species seen were KESTREL, SPARROWHAWK, 22 flyover GREYLAG GEESE, and 3 GULL species, HERRING, BLACK HEADED and LESSER BLACK BACKED.

The morning ended up with just 40 species being found, with the likes of Song Thrush, Mistle Thrush, Coal Tit, long Tailed Tit, Bullfinch, and Treecreeper not being found. With just 4 short afternoon patch visits left for September, it will be very hard to add anything else to the months list, and it will probably remain on 73, but thats still the 2nd best september out of 9.