Pittswood Birds

Although not as windy as yesterday, there was still a gusty breeze blowing, and by the time I got out this afternoon a rash of heavy showers blew through. There were still some nice bird species seen though, early on as I walked into work, a WILLOW WARBLER was found in the Greenhouse Complex Grounds, and crossing Migrant Alley both YELLOW WAGTAIL and SAND MARTIN flew over, the long staying WHEATEAR was also seen, which on the walk home, was found to have been joined by another  :-)

The afternoon session was a bit of a stop and go affair, most of it was spent sheltering under various trees and hedges at Migrant Alley, trying to keep out of the downpours that kept passing through. Saying that, there was the odd bright spell, and it was during one of these that I watched the 2 Wheatears on one of the paddocks, I then noticed another WHINCHAT on the fence line, yes, another one!. MEADOW PIPITS and HOUSE MARTINS kept flying through in small groups, along with a few Sand Martins, plus the regular flock of GOLDFINCH and LINNETS were around. A CHIFFCHAFF and a possible Whitethroat were in the Tall hedge, but the latter was lost to view before I could say for certain, if it was a Whitethroat it would be quite a late one for my patch, with only last year having recorded one later, that was on the 16th Sept.

A KESTREL was up hunting over the Tree Nursery, but the only other raptor seen today was a COMMON BUZZARD, it spooked up hundreds of Gulls from a nearby field just off my patch, but as they flushed they came overhead, revealing BLACK HEADED, LESSER BLACK BACKED, and in the majority HERRING GULLS.

Blackcap

The Blackcap above, was snapped in my garden just as I left this afternoon

Common Buzzard

I took this Common buzzard photo with the 400mm lens and the 1.4 converter, but the combination dont go well together when photographing birds in flight, I have to use the manual focus which proves extremely difficult with moving targets, and so they are a bit out of focus  :-) .  Ooops! sorry about the text and background colour at the start of the post, still trying to get to grips with the new blogger format  :-) !!

Common Buzzard