Pittswood Birds

The brief glimpses of sunshine had gone by the time I got out this afternoon, and the visit was a much quieter one than of late! I made a trip to Migrant Alley first off, to try to photo a YELLOWHAMMER, half a dozen flew from the tall hedge before I even got anywhere near for a photo, i'll keep trying though. Whilst there, I noted 3 SKYLARK out in the sheep pasture, and a KESTREL hunting over one of the tatty hedgerows.

Crossing the Tree Nursery, there were at least 24 MEADOW PIPITS flushing up and dropping down, hard to count them! Other than that it was down to BLACKBIRDS, DUNNOCKS and ROBINS with a couple of MAGPIES. I peaked through the hedgerow, over to the Pub Field, and saw the now regular flock of 40-50 BLACK HEADED GULLS were there but nothing with them today.

Over at the lakes, the ornamental lake there was empty. The adjacent main lake however had 24 MALLARDS, a CORMORANT and 6 MOORHEN, the other, smaller lake, had just 4 Mallard and 2 Moorhens, so no exciting surprises here today!  A quick look around the lakeside vegetation and the edge of the Scrubby Woods was good for TREECREEPER, NUTHATCH, GOLDCREST, BULLFINCH and COAL TIT, much as I would expect, while at the nearby house ( that owns the main lake) the garden feeders were suffering the same fate as mine, a SPARROWHAWK sitting in the trees waiting for a customer on the sunflower hearts!

It seems ages since last weekends full patch walk, so i'm looking forward to tomorrows, where I can hopefully add a new species for the month, the current tally of 62 is the fourth best November total, still 2 behind the third best, and 6 behind the record  :-) Kingfisher and Common Gull will be the most likely additions now.

Photo opportunities were few, and in the light, not really worth the effort, as you can see by this Meadow Pipit photo.

Meadow Pipit

So for a treat today i'll put up some photo's of last weekends garden visitor the Nuthatch  :-)

Nuthatch

Nuthatch

Nuthatch