Pittswood Birds

The weather picked up a bit this afternoon, with some good, warm, sunny spells. The birding picked up a bit as well, and the were some notable species seen ( for my patch)

After walking through the Small Holding, and photographing a few of the Finch's and Tits that had Gathered there, I meandered my way through the Wet woods, trying to be as quiet as possible, which was impossible, as the very dry underfoot conditions made the leaves and twigs crunch loudly, like walking on bags of crisps! However, I did mange to creep up on three TEAL that were on one of the diminishing pools, a female and two males, must be the same birds I saw on the 24th. One of the males missed being photographed by a nano second, as I followed him in the view finder, swimming along, the camera decided to focus on a nearby branch, the chance was gone and he swam into deeper cover  :-(

Over at the lakes it was as you were with the 3 pairs of CANADA GEESE and the pair of COOTS, but singles of both SISKIN and LESSER REDPOLL were seen in the Scrubby Woods, along with the regular species of COAL TIT, LONG TAILED TIT, GOLDCREST, NUTHATCH, and TREECREEPER.

I made my way over to Migrant Alley for another skywatch, on the way noting 4 GREEN WOODPECKERS in the Tree Nursery. Whilst skywatching from my seat, I noted a COMMON BUZZARD go low over the Greenhouse Copse, from where a LITTLE OWL called, and at least 100 FIELDFARE flew, the most recorded here all winter. A KESTREL was seen numerous times up hunting, and both HERRING and BLACK HEADED GULLS were seen. A YELLOWHAMMER flew into the tall hedge behind my seat, and although it called a few times I wasn't treated to any song from it.

The sheep pasture has now been filled with sheep and their newborn lambs, these were joined by the Corvids, waiting for the lambs docked tails to drop off, mostly ROOKS, who find this a useful food source, occurring as it does just when their young will be hatching.

The months end produced no more species to the month or year list today, but with the February list ending on 68 species, this was the best ever February total for the 11 years. There were two species that were found this month that have not occurred in any other February, the Barnacle Goose, and more surprisingly the Common Snipe, these two bring the combined February list to 81, which is one species behind January, and six behind March. The 11 year mean species count for February is now 60.4, but the mean for the last 5 February's is 64.1, the latter years having more effort put in !!

Here's the photo's from the finch's and tits seen at the Small Holding today, plus the friendly ROBIN thrown in  ;-)

GREENFINCH

CHAFFINCH

GREAT TIT

Great Tit

Robin