Sunday 22 May 2011

It wasn't the best of visits today! First off it was raining and blowing a gale, the rain passed over pretty quickly but it remained very windy, secondly the College stables were holding some kind of event, so I avoided the area.

All this contributed to a low species tally today of just 43, with very few highlights. One though, was seeing the first Juv. ROOKS at Migrant Alley, where later in the visit, during a sky watch a PEREGRINE (69) at last flew from the tower in Hadlow over the College Grounds, that gives this May the 3rd best total out of the ten years.

Other than these small crumbs of encouragement, not much else was noteworthy, very few birds sang over at the Scrubby Woods, if they did I couldn't here them over the wind! BLACKCAP, CHIFFCHAFF and CUCKOO did get heard in the end though. On the water just 3 MALLARDS a MOORHEN and a GREY HERON were seen, no sign of the Coots for the second day running :-(

A pair of SPARROWHAWKS were seen over the Wet Woods, and just one WHITETHROAT and one TURTLE DOVE were seen, both in the Tree Nursery.

I spent a bit of this afternoon photographing the Juv. birds that are coming into my garden ; First up is a HOUSE SPARROW
Then the GOLDFINCH





Above and below is the STARLING





Lastly, above and below is the DUNNOCK


5 comments:

Greenie said...

Warren ,
Another very hard day out there again .We had branches ripped out of the trees in the road .
But at least the Peregrine showed up for you .

Warren Baker said...

A waste of a good sunday Greenie!! Bet a few nests got blown out of the tree canopy as well :-(

ShySongbird said...

Branches blown down here too Warren, the high winds have been horrendous and still no rain at all.

Well done with the Peregrine.

Nice to see the youngsters in the garden. They are busy here also.

Bob Bushell said...

Ooh, all those youngsters, they are beautiful.

Sharon said...

Very blowy here all day too Warren - nice that you got fledglings in your garden - we've had a couple of House Sparrows but that's it. Got Starling chicks in our roof that we're waiting to see :)