Pittswood Birds

I took this Great Spotted Woodpecker photo in my garden, two were squabbling over the nuts  :-)

As expected, this morning was grey, misty, damp, and gloomy, the story of so many days this month!  None -the-less a good variety of bird species were seen on my four hour full patch walk, totalling 45 in all. As I started out, a KESTREL was seen hunting over the sheep pasture opposite my house, while a little further on in the walk the only other raptor species of the day was seen, the COMMON BUZZARD. It was out on the Pub Field again, and nearby, tolerating it's presence, were 3 LAPWING, they were joined an hour or so later by 7 more.

The walk through Migrant Alley, and the College Grounds only provided me with the regular species, none of them in any notable numbers though, just ones and two's appearing. These were the likes of SKYLARK, MEADOW PIPIT, LINNET, REDWING, FIELDFARE, GOLDCREST, GREY HERON, MISTLE THRUSH, with flyovers from SISKIN, BLACK HEADED GULL, and HERRING GULL. On the walk back through Migrant Alley, I passed the Tall Hedge, which borders the Greenhouse Complex to check out the wheat grain that I have put down for the birds, I was pleased to see 8 YELLOWHAMMER along the hedge, but only saw 2 actually feeding on the grain, along with a CHAFFINCH. I'm hoping if the weather gets a bit colder, numbers may build up further  ;-)

The second half of my walk, through the Small Holding, Wet Woods, and Lake area, slowly increased my list, the likes of GREEN and GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER, TREECREEPER, BULLFINCH, SONGTHRUSH, and COAL TIT being added, however on the Lakes today, as well as the usual MALLARDS, which had increased in number to 28, and the MOORHENS of which there were 7, my first CANADA GEESE (58) of the month were also present.

I manged a short skywatching session on my seat over at Migrant Alley just after mid-day, and saw 8 GREYLAG GEESE go over, plus more excitingly my first GOLDEN PLOVER (59) since February, I heard it calling long before I saw it, very nice  :-)  More frustratingly, I also saw the tail end of a Wader species disappearing into the gloom, I got onto well too late to ID it, also 30 Duck species went over in formation, but they were just small silhouettes, up in the gloom, I couldn't tell what species they were, so that's two patch ticks missed !!!

The Buzzard also put in another appearance, low over, again just a silhouette

Buzzard