Pittswood Birds

This morning was mostly cloudy, after some initial fog, then sunny and warm from around 10am.

After finding the Wheatear yesterday, I was looking forward to this mornings walk, I fancied something else may turn up, but in reality the five hour visit was a bit of an anticlimax. The 44 species recorded was a little on the low side, with species like Skylark, Turtle Dove, Long Tailed Tit and Kestrel, which are all pretty regular not being found this morning.

The most lively pieces of habitat today were the Tree Nursery and the College Grounds, the latter providing me with a good mix of summer and resident birds, CHIFFCHAFF, BLACKCAP, WHITETHROAT, SPOTTED FLYCATCHER, GOLDCREST, COAL TIT, and BULLFINCH were the pick of the bunch. Whilst in the Tree Nursery LESSER WHITETHROAT and more excitingly REED WARBLER were found again.

Flyovers of note were LESSER BLACK BACKED and HERRING GULL, SPARROWHAWK, plus the hundreds of GREYLAG and CANADA GEESE all noisily flying around in neatly organised 'V' formations.

An afternoon visit to Migrant Alley was worth the effort in the warm humid conditions, I watched the first two HOBBIES (63) of August mobbing a Sparrowhawk, and 3 SWIFTS were also added to the dayslist, these are really getting hard to find now, with the majority having already left for Africa. I also found some flutters, most of which were Gatekeepers, they were everywhere! A Common blue and a Small Copper were nice to see.

This ROBIN posed nicely in the sunshine at the College Grounds

As did this DUNNOCK

Below is the Small Copper seen this afternoon