Pittswood Birds

I had quite an interesting patch visit this morning, spending the whole of the morning out around the Greenhouse grounds and Migrant Alley with shorter visits to the Pub Field and Tree Nursery. The sun was shining, and a southerly breeze blew, making for pleasant conditions as I entered the Greenhouse Grounds.

There were plenty of birds about in the rough areas around the Greenhouses, mainly the common stuff, GOLDFINCH, GREENFINCH, CHAFFINCH, BLUE TIT, GREAT TIT, WREN, ROBIN, DUNNOCK, BLACKBIRD, SONGTHRUSH, GREEN WOODPECKER, plus some summer birds were about, WHITETHROAT, CHIFFCHAFF, BLACKCAP, also a line of SWALLOWS on the Greenhouses. As I walked tover to check the heap of discarded Raspberries I saw a perfect looking GARDEN WARBLER feeding on Blackberries, but a real treat was seeing not one but two SEDGE WARBLERS feeding on the Raspberry pile, while taking a few photo's of them, I spied a bird at the top of a nearby Hawthorn bush, raising my bins I found it to be another WHINCHAT - brilliant!

The sheep pasture at Migrant Alley had a YELLOW WAGTAIL feeding in it, my efforts to photograph it failed miserably, as is often the case with this species.  I walked the pasture and paddocks of Migrant Alley, the first of many times this morning, but didn't find an expected Wheatear, they really are scarce here this August. Plenty of ROOKS, CARRION CROWS, JACKDAWS, WOODPIGEONS were seen, as well as a small flock of a dozen or so LINNETS, which had some recently fledged birds in with them, and at least 4 SKYLARKS were about, the daily flyover of GREYLAG and CANADA GEESE still continues, as does the flyover of HERRING GULLS.

The wooded headland to the north of Migrant Alley had a couple of screeching JAYS, and a GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER, also the odd calling Chiffchaff. I relocated the Whinchat on a fence rail on one of my circuits of the paddocks, but no other passage migrants were found. There were at least fifty HOUSE MARTINS that passed over at one point, and I enjoyed watching the KESTREL hunting over the Tree Nursery, the only other raptor today was a SPARROWHAWK.

Not a bad collection of birds, 38 species in all, considering only part of my patch was covered today  :-)   No new ones for the month though, so I'm still seven behind the best August total.

I took lots of photo's of the Sedge Warbler and Whitethroat at the Raspberry pile today, so I'll save a few for tomorrow, as the weather looks a bit uncooperative for photography.

Sedge Warbler

Sedge Warbler

Sedge Warbler

Whitethroat

Whitethroat - shame about the bar-coding!