Pittswood Birds

Light ! Blue sky! Sunshine at last!! Yes, for the first time in ages, the sun was out for my afternoon patch visit :-)

I had a full two hours out this afternoon, amazing how a bit of sun extends the day. So off to the lakes I went, yesterday things were very wet underfoot, today they were even wetter, more heavy rain fell overnight, and the Wet woods was almost as full as it can be, at least 6 MALLARD were out in the tangle of branches, they are paired up now, and if the weather warms up a bit, in a couple of weeks they will start to breed. A GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER was calling from a large Oak, and in almost every Alder tree I looked at, a party of SISKIN were feeding, I estimate about 60 were i the Woods.

I waded down the footpath to the lakes, expectant as ever, that I would find something other than Mallard or Moorhen on the water today,Well, unfortunately I didn't, it was as normal, 8 Mallard and 4 MOORHENS :-(

I spent most of the rest of the afternoon walking round the Scrubby woods, adjacent to the main lake, keeping an eye on the sky, and hoping something would drop down onto the water, but I was out of luck today, instead I had an enjoyable time trying to photograph the members of a feeding flock I found, NUTHATCH, TREECREEPER, BLUE TIT, GREAT TIT, LONG TAILED TIT, GOLDCREST, (of which 4 were chasing around) and MARSH TIT all gave me the run around, and I never did get a clear photo, but a Blue Tit shot was passable, as was a Marsh Tit. The Marsh Tit was interesting, as it had a ring on it's leg, this must be the bird my friend up the road from me rung last winter, so there are definitely two birds on my patch, the one ive been recording all this winter has no ring. What a hardy little Tit :-)

I eventually left for home, and went the way of the Tree Nursery hopefully to see if the LINNETS were still roosting there, I wasn't disappointed, I watched at least 100 of them flitting about, waiting for the work crew to leave before they dropped down into the shrubs. I noted the KESTREL watching them from the Greenhouse Complex too!


Above and below Marsh Tit, there's always a stick in the frame !

Below: Blue Tit - with stick!

Below are the Linnets at dusk, there around 70 -80 here

Greenie, or Dean will no doubt enlighten me to what this fungus is, it was on an Oak tree, and was jelly like.

The last two photo's are of the sunset over the Tree Nursery, with the tall mature trees of the wet woods in the backround