Pittswood Birds

Hooray! This morning was my last at work until the 4 January  :-)  That means plenty of birding until then. As it was the last day, I got home a bit earlier, allowing me a spell in the garden with the camera, but it soon clouded over and the only photo I got was of this NUTHATCH.

Nuthatch

A visit to the lakes a bit later proved disastrous, as just about everyone is off work now, the warmer weather tempting out just about every local dog walker, there were dog walkers everywhere  :-(  Not a single bird was seen on any of the lakes, not even a Moorhen. I quickly moved on, and visited the Pub Field, at least it was quieter here, allowing me to see at least 100 LAPWING, with 25 BLACK HEADED GULLS. After scanning the Lapwing flock, and finding no Golden Plover ( as usual!), I moved off to Migrant Alley, via the Tree Nursery, the latter had 10 MEADOW PIPITS, a couple of GREEN WOODPECKERS, a flyover SPARROWHAWK, plus the usual WRENS, DUNNOCKS, ROBINS, BLACKBIRDS, and MAGPIES.

At Migrant Alley, I saw a couple of SKYLARK drop down into the sheep pasture, whilst in the Alder trees bordering the Greenhouse Complex were a group of a dozen GOLDFINCH, with three SISKIN. Looking out across the paddocks there were around 150 WOODPIGEONS, 60 JACKDAWS, and at least 100 ROOKS,  25 STARLINGS lined up on a fence rail, and I heard a lone LESSER REDPOLL go over. I have befriended another Robin from the nearby tall hedge, it follows where I walk, and picks up any disturbed insects, at times it came so close my camera wouldn't focus on it  :-)

Friendly Robin

I had a short skywatch from my seat whilst at Migrant Alley, but the sky remained empty most of the time, just pigeons and Corvids going over, but after seeing the Lapwing flock get spooked up over at the pub filed, I scanned the sky around them and found a PEREGRINE (60), the first sighting of one this month, hopefully it is one of the local birds from the tower, and all the work going on there hasn't forced them to move elsewhere yet.

With 11 days left of the month ( and the year!) I hope to be out on full patch walks for most of them, and so add some species to the months list, which is still only in fifth place out of the ten Decembers recorded so far. Surely I'll find a Canada Goose, a species found in all previous months this year!