Pittswood Birds

This afternoon, after work, I spent some time in the Tree Nursery trying to find some Butterflies, although it was warmer than of late, the sunshine was very hazy and a stiff cool wind blew limiting my find to a single Holly Blue, a single Orange Tip, two Brown Argus, and three Small Whites. Birdwise not much was seen amongst the shrubs, the two pairs of Whitethroat flitted from shrub to shrub, a GREEN WOODPECKER flew up and away, as did two STOCK DOVES, and the regular DUNNOCK, BLACKBIRD SONGTHUSH and WRENS were heard.
I manged to photograph the Holly Blue and one of the Brown Argus...........

Holly Blue

Brown Argus

Brown Argus

Brown Argus ( I took quite a few photo's of it!)

After the Butterfly session, I went over to my seat at Migrant Alley for a spot of skywatching, stopping off at the Greenhouse Grounds for quick look round, where I heard both Whitethroat and BLACKCAP singing, and also photographed this moth ( Greenie, or Dean will tell me what it is!)

Unknown Moth -anyone ?

Once on my seat the first things noted were SWIFTS, some no doubt were the local birds, but many more were feeding up high and passing through. Three HERRING GULLS and a LESSER BLACK BACKED GULL were seen, and the first of several sightings of a SPARROWHAWK was had. Inevitably it wasn't long before a BUZZARD showed up, but more pleasing for me was seeing a HOBBY fly through  :-)

After an hour I decided to walk a circuit of Migrant Alley, finding the 40 strong flock of LINNETS, a few GOLDFINCH, HOUSE SPARROWS and two PIED WAGTAILS. I was constantly checking the sky in the hope of seeing a Black Headed Gull go over as I haven't had one yet this month, they are seldom seen here in May, however I got something much more exciting fly over - an OSPREY (97,66) ! WOW! absolutely fantastic! I' ve had the odd Osprey go over on Autumn passage before, but this is my first on spring passage  :-) I tried for a photo, but had a 400mm lens plus a 1.4 converter on, which I was using for the Butterfly close ups, this meant the auto focus was not working, and trying to manually focus on a flying bird with a lens of  560mm is near impossible ( especially when your over excited!) I got a record shot anyway  :-)

Osprey!! Yesssssss!  :-)

After that bit of excitement, I carried on with the circuit of Migrant Alley, and heard a sound i've not heard for a year, right in the North West corner of my patch a YELLOWHAMMER (67) was singing, one more for the months list :-)  I completed my walk round the paddocks and sheep pasture and again had a bit of a Sky watch, I wanted to try and get five Raptor species for the afternoon by seeing the Kestrel, but for the first time in weeks it didn't show, just a GREY HERON was all I saw  :-(

The humble House Sparrow