Pittswood Birds

A window in the foul weather of late allowed for a 5 hour full patch walk this morning, in which some sunny spells made it feel quite pleasant, if out of the still quite brisk wind. The total species recorded for the day was up on recent full patch walks, with an excellent 50 being tallied up, and that was without the likes of Bullfinch, Long Tailed Tit, and Mistle Thrush, which I would have expected.

Robin - regular species :-)

The morning started out quite ordinarily, I ticked off all the usual suspects, WREN, STARLING, MAGPIE, CHAFFINCH, WOODPIGEON, GREENFINCH, JACKDAW, GREEN WOODPECKER, SWALLOW, GOLDFINCH, BLACKBIRD and CARRION CROW, a dozen in under 2 minutes as I walked along Ashes lane. A LESSER WHITETHROAT sang from the Greenhouse Grounds, as did a BLACKCAP, which had at least 2 recently fledged young with it, the COMMON WHITETHROAT also showed well here with its youngsters.

Crossing Migrant Alley towards the College Grounds, HERRING GULL, LESSER BLACK BACKED GULL and BLACK HEADED GULL were seen going over, also the KESTREL pair and a SPARROWHAWK were seen hunting, a few swifts, were circling high up, the ever present ROOKS fed amongst the sheep and a SKYLARK sang. Arriving at the College Grounds, more regular species were found, BLUE TIT, GREAT TIT, COAL TIT, GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER, PIED WAGTAIL, SONG THRUSH, HOUSE SPARROW, COLLARED DOVE, JAY, DUNNOCK, GOLDCREST, ROBIN, CHIFFCHAFF, and the SPOTTED FLYCATCHER in that order, on the ponds I found the MOORHEN family, then two GREY HERONS flew low over, allowing these photo's  :-)

Grey heron

Grey heron

I walked back through Migrant Alley to head for the Tree Nursery and then on to the Lakes, stopping to watch a around 20 HOUSE MARTINS feeding around the sheep pasture, the most seen here all year. Stooping briefly at my sky watching seat, I chanced to look NW and saw the unmistakable and exciting flight of a harrier species coming straight at me, at first it was around 500m away, but as it neared me it veered off and into the sun ( as usual) I got good, but mostly silhouette views of it, and  could see it had long thin wings, and manged to pick out a white rump, a ringtail harrier! But what type? I fired off a few hurried photo's, and looking back at the view finder initially thought Hen Harrier, but after getting on the computer and looking at them, as well as spending ages looking on the net at ring tailed harriers I was inclined to record this bird as a Montagu's Harrier, but after much deliberation, and advice from other birders, it will go down as a HEN HARRIER (98,63), still a very exciting addition to my year list!

Montagu's Harrier ? not quite ! 

I finished off the walk by visiting the Lakes and Scrubby Woods, which provided me with views of a female CUCKOO, unusual here in June, NUTHATCH, TREECREEPER and STOCK DOVE were added to my list, as well as the 12 CANADA GEESE, 2 MALLARDS and the COOT family on the lake. On the way home a HOBBY was seen and I finally found a LINNET for the day, dont know where they had been hiding  :-)