Pittswood Birds

Steady rain fell this morning as I walked into work, but I mustn't complain, it's the first rain for a while now. There was still a WHEATEAR present at Migrant Alley, and also 9 YELLOW WAGTAILS were feeding out in one of the paddocks.

This afternoon I was back out at Migrant Alley and the Greenhouse Grounds, in some rather dull, murky and humid conditions. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending how you look at it, the first pair of birds I saw were KESTREL and SPARROWHAWK, remarkably they were sitting just a meter apart on the Greenhouse guttering, needless to say there was not a lot of activity in the tall hedge and scrub area !!

I moved over to the paddocks, where the Wheatear was happily perched on the fence line, and further down I could see three GREEN WOODPECKERS, two of them immature birds, clinging to the fence posts. I sat down for an hour, and watched and waited, no more migrants dropped in, but another Yellow Wagtail circled over before flying off SE, also two SWIFTS flew NE, I looked up my Swift records and see that the mean last seen date is the 26th August, so I should get one or two more sightings of them.

30-40 LINNETS were wheeling around in a flock, up and down from the more weedier of the paddocks, and overhead small skeins of GREYLAG and CANADA GEESE were moving around the area, a few HERRING GULLS also went over, and two LESSER BLACK BACK GULLS, but I didn't see a much wanted Common tern for the year list! I heard a LITTLE OWL calling from the Greenhouse Copse, and shortly after walked back to the tall hedge and the Greenhouse area, where the Kestrel was up hunting still. I had a quick look around the hedge, and found some skulking CHIFFCHAFFS, and two WHITETHROATS, but little else, the Whinchat that was present for the last two days has apparently moved on now - unless it's hiding from the raptors :-)

I'm on holiday until next Tuesday now, so i'll be out scouring my patch for the 7 new species needed this month to beat the record August total, weather permitting!

It wasn't a day for the camera, I tried to get a photo of the finch's on my garden feeder, but it didn't really work out :-)