Pittswood Birds

When I arrived home from work this afternoon I flushed a MOORHEN from my garden feeding station, the 28th species to use my garden this year  :-)  I thought that it had set the record for the most species seen in my garden in any one month, but looking more carefully at my stats, I see that that honour in fact goes to the December of 2010, in which 29 species visited, so I still need two more new species to set the record! Still, the Moorhens arrival has set the record for January  :-)

Whilst I ate my lunch, it crept back into my garden again, so here's a few images of said Moorhen, unfortunately in poor light and through the double glazing again.

Moorhen - species No.28 for my garden year list   :-)

Moorhen

Moorhen

After that little bit of excitement, I headed off out onto my patch. I went over to the lakes, mainly to see if they were still frozen, stopping on the way to check the Tree Nursery I watched a BUZZARD hunting, as well as a SPARROWHAWK and the KESTREL pair, so not much passerine action was seen, apart from a GREEN WOODPECKER.

The lakes were indeed still frozen when I arrived, but did at least show some signs of thawing around the edges, it will be a day or two yet before they are free of ice, giving that we get no more frosts. I decided to give the nearby Scrubby Woods a look through, and heard GOLDCREST, COAL TIT, BULLFINCH, and NUTHATCH calling, but the excitement for this afternoon was provided by a WOODCOCK (66) that flew up just yards from me, it danced its way through the tree branches and dropped back down deeper into the woods, a great bird to find here, they are seldom found without a bit of hard weather about.

I moved on into the Wet Woods, where the pools of water are showing better signs of thawing, but are still mostly frozen over, so there wasn't much about apart from a few REDWING, GREAT TITS, BLUE TITS and a GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER.

My last port of call was the Greenhouse Grounds, I wanted to check out the newly scraped muddy area, but there were workers there today, I did see lots of BLACKBIRDS on it though, with a few SONGTHRUSH, FIELDFARE, ROBINS and DUNNOCKS. I'm hoping a Grey Wagtail will drop in here at some time this month, this is just about the only species left i've got a real chance of adding to the January list now, which is up into second place out of twelve, 2 behind the January totals of 2009 and 2011. I might just get a flyover Golden Plover or  maybe a Mandarin Duck if the lakes thaw out, so it might be a record January yet  :-)