Pittswood Birds

Yet again it was not a very nice day to be out, windy, wet and cooler than yesterday, I think we have paid the price in full for the sunny day we had on Tuesday!!

I spent 3 hours out on my patch from 07:00hrs, and during that time only small numbers of birds were seen, the largest group of birds, apart from the WOODPIGEONS, were a flock of 75 SISKINS that were flushed up from the Alder trees along the College stream by something unseen, also a group of 20 REDWING on the College sports pitch, a species I didn't record yesterday.

The 47 species recorded today was better than an average February day total, but as I said earlier, few actual birds were about, most species were either just flying over singly, such as the YELLOWHAMMER, SKYLARK, KESTREL and PIED WAGTAIL over Migrant Alley, or they were only heard, such as the STOCK DOVE, SONGTHRUSH, WREN, TREECREEPER, JAY, and BULLFINCH. Only singles of DUNNOCK, MARSH TIT, SPARROWHAWK, COAL TIT, PHEASANT, NUTHATCH, CORMORANT, and GREEN WOODPECKER, showed themselves, so you can see there were long gaps in the 3 hours where nothing happened :-)

There were occasional small groups of birds, one of note was a group of 5 LESSER BLACK BACKED GULLS that flew over the lake, where the already mentioned Cormorant was fishing, 6 CANADA GEESE and 4 MALLARD were also warily sitting on the water. A feeding party of 6 LONG TAILED TITS with two GOLDCRESTS were in the adjacent Scrubby Woods, and it was whilst in there that I saw 18 FIELDFARE flyover.

The birds of the day however, were a new species for the month at last, 3 flyover LAPWING (56) moved the months total along, but this February still remains in 9th position out of the ten Feb's recorded, and a whopping 12 species behind the record Feb total ! There is still time to catch up though, i've got 2 days holiday at the end of the month, this will give me a 4 day run of full patch walks from the 24th.

No pics today the weather saw to that :-(