Pittswood Birds

The Hawthorn crop this year looks good, a feast for the winter thrushes

On a much improved afternoon weatherwise, I visited the lakes, via the Small holding and Wet woods instead of the paddocks and pastures of Migrant Alley, as there was much disturbance there. In the Small Holding a troop of LONG TAILED TITS moved through the tree canopy, along with a few BLUE and GREAT TITS, while in the Wet woods the pits are beginning to fill up with water, bringing hope of a Teal dropping in, this will depend on how many dog walkers go through though.

Arriving at the lakes I found it full of Geese, 44 CANADA and 4 GREYLAGS, all preening and resting up. The only ducks seen there were 2 MALLARDS, 4 MOORHEN were also seen. The adjacent Scrubby Woods had a calling CHIFFCHAFF as well as a calling BULLFINCH, nothing much else of note here though, apart from a couple of Comma Butterflies.

I made my way over to the Tree Nursery, and checked the boundary hedgerow, where I found a male BLACKCAP feeding on Elder berries, no other warblers were with it today though. The shrubs and vegetation in the Tree Nursery were empty as far as I could tell, just MAGPIES, DUNNOCKS and ROBINS were found. Next up was the Greenhouse Grounds, this proved relatively quiet too, with the regular WRENS, Robins, Dunnocks, and BLACKBIRDS, with a small flock of 8 GOLDFINCH.

I ended up on my sky watching seat, where I spent 40 minutes scanning the sky. I didn't take long to find the pair of local KESTRELS and a pair of SPARROWHAWKS, plus the local group of SWALLOWS, with just small numbers of HOUSE MARTIN passing through and joining them for short periods. A CORMORANT flew low over, as did a few HERRING GULLS and two LESSER BLACK BACKED GULLS.

A scan of all the fences and posts out in the paddocks and pasture was made, but nothing was seen, as I said earlier it had been heavily disturbed already.

With just 3 days left of September I still need 3 more species to reach the mean average September total for the last 5 years, it doesn't look too good though, and another relatively poor month looks on the cards as far as bird diversity is concerned, but that has been the case for most of this year, only February and August have achieved a species total above their respective months previous 5 year average.

As well as the Hawthorn Berries at the top of the page, I also found a few other subjects for the camera today  :-)

One of the Greylag Geese on the main lake, with the Canadian Geese

Canada Geese

Comma Butterfly on Blackberries