Pittswood Birds

It was clear and mild this morning on the way to work, and as it got light a few birds of note were seen going over Migrant Alley. 4 GREY HERON,  2 skeins of GREY LAG GEESE (one of 14 one of 17 birds), 2 LESSER REDPOLL, 5 min of MEADOW PIPIT and a SISKIN. It looked good just to sit and watch the sky for an hour, but work beckoned  :-(

After work, I was back out on patch, I visited the Tree Nursery and Pub Field first, hoping something had dropped into the many shrubs in the nursery, there were plenty of CHAFFINCH and BLACKBIRD about, some probably new in, but not much else, a KESTREL hunted above for a few minutes, and 3 SKYLARKS flew over as I left for the Pub Field. Here it was all very dry and quiet, just a few more Chaffinch's around the edge of the field. I cut back through the Tree Nursery to get to Migrant Alley, and as I looked over at the sky above the Wet Woods I saw two BUZZARDS actually come down and go into the woods, a very scarce sight to see a Buzzards alight anywhere on my patch!

Over at Migrant Alley there was a gaggle of silly squealing student teenage girls, learning how to clean horse troughs, so i didn't bother with a circuit of the paddocks, instead I watched the sky for an hour, from my seat.. This produced a few more flyovers from the likes of Skylark, Redpoll, Meadow Pipit, but only ever in singles at a time. There was the usual sighting of a SPARROWHAWK, and the local PIED WAGTAILS at the Greenhouse Complex had a GREY WAGTAIL with them today, but it didn't hang around long. To the south of my patch there was a field being ploughed, and large numbers of HERRING and BLACK HEADED GULLS flew over my patch to get to it, they were joined by hundreds of Corvids, the whole lot kept getting spooked every few minutes, sending a huge cloud of Gulls and Corvids into the air in a swirling mass, the Buzzards I saw earlier probably being the culprits for that!

Not much else to report until I got up to leave at around 17:00hrs, when a final look up revealed 7 LAPWING (64) coming from the North and flying directly over the Greenhouse Complex, at last something to kick start the months list again  :-)

One of the many Black Headed gulls that went over

One of the Chaffinch 's

Bonus photo today, the garden BLUE TIT, I couldn't resist this one  :-)