Wednesday 1 December 2010

A new month begins, and as you can see by the photo above, Pittswood has joined the rest of the county in having a covering of snow - about 5 inches fell overnight.

I attempted to walk into work this morning but was beaten back by a strong NE wind, stinging snow and thigh high drifts at Migrant alley, so no work for me today!

Most of the day was spent window watching, not the best place to get a good December species total going, but I did get 27 today, some way still to go then to beat the record of 73, achieved in 2008. The average December tally is 60.8, with a combined total for the 8 Decembers gone, of 82.

After restocking all the feeders, and chucking out more seed onto an area I cleared of snow, the following species were seen :-

Peak Numbers.

14 BLUE TITS
5 GREAT TITS
14 GOLDFINCH
12 GREENFINCH
25 CHAFFINCH
7 HOUSE SPARROW
2 DUNNOCK
4 ROBIN
7 COLLARED DOVE
3 STARLING
3 BLACKBIRD
2 GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER
1 each of NUTHATCH, JAY, MAGPIE, JACKDAW, SPARROWHAWK, WOODPIGEON, also some scarcer birds that dont visit my garden to often, a MOORHEN, a SISKIN and two REDWING - quite a good garden bird list if I do say so myself :-) Strange I had no Coal Tit today.

Birds noted going over were few and far between, but BLACK HEADED GULL, FIELDFARE, GREEN WOODPECKER, CARRION CROW and nice flock of 41 LAPWING going south, and best of all, and get this! A RED KITE !! it flew NW low over, what a brilliant bird for the December list, any months list in fact! This is the second Red Kite I have recorded from the house, lets hope it becomes a common occurrence :-)

I took some ''through the window'' photo's today

Above: Goldfinch and Greenfinch
Below: a Jay


Lastly the Moorhen, not had one of these in the garden since the last cold spell back in February.




10 comments:

Derek Faulkner said...

Did I read that right, "T" shirt man didn't go to work because of a bit of snow. Wasn't your school relying on you.

Greenie said...

Warren ,
You certainly did have them all today .
I was expecting lots , but not to be .

Bob Bushell said...

A lovely garden you've got, with the Jay, Goldfinches and Greenfinches.

Stewart said...

Great stuff there Warren....

Ken. said...

Hi Warren.
You had a good days garden count,including my favourite bird, a Red Kite.
Lets hope you can make up for todays losses tomorrow.
Nice pics.

Sharon said...

Nice start to December Warren & congratulations on November :)
Funny you mentioned the Coal Tit (or lack of it) - not seen ours for the past 3 days either, don't know why.

ShySongbird said...

And there I was imagining you fighting your way through the drifts to walk your patch Warren ;) I think you were in the best place in the warm though, watching a brilliant array of birds from the window. I still can't get my head round the image of a Moorhen in the garden! I can say with certainty I will never see one in mine.

Well done on the Red Kite sighting, they really seem to be doing well now.

Pete Woodruff said...

Superb garden list Warren, as for the Red Kite over....WOW!!

Anonymous said...

Some good birds for the garden there, Warren.

Jann said...

Welcome to my world...snow, ugh. But so far only 3" plus drift mounds...I wish I got as many bird species at my feeders as you do!