Pittswood Birds

A frosty, but sunny and bright walk into work this morning was made all the more enjoyable when I spied 3 WAXWINGS sitting high up in an oak tree in a garden adjacent to the sheep pasture at Migrant Alley, a walk to work doesn't get much better than that! Around 60 FIELDFARE were also seen, they were feeding in the sheep pasture.

This afternoon after work, I headed off over to the Lakes as usual, where I found them to be very busy, relative to normal that is! I found18 CANADA GEESE, 2 MALLARD, 6 MOORHEN a KINGFISHER, the COOT pair and a surprise gathering of 4 TEAL (63) an unusual sighting on the lakes, as are many duck species, but Teals, when they do show up, are normally to be found in the Wet Woods - still, a most welcome addition to the month  :-)

This is a view of the smallest of the 3 lakes, you can just make out one of the female Teal amongst the far branches, just about centre of the photo  :-)

The 18 Canada Geese were somewhat more obvious!

The adjacent Scrubby Woods was given a good look through, and I was pleased to see a WOODCOCK (64) fly up and drop back down further into the woods, another good species to add to the February list :-) Also of note in the scrubby Woods today were a pair of LONG TAILED TITS, a singing COAL TIT, a GOLDCREST and at least 4 BULLFINCH.

Goldcrest in the Scrubby woods

Goldcrest

I didn't have much time left for much more birding, but a quick look around the Tree Nursery was had, where a KESTREL was seen hunting, and a SPARROWHAWK flew over, 2 GREEN WOODPECKERS and 4 SONGTHRUSH were also seen, but it was only a quick look round.

For a short 90 minute visit it wasn't a bad result, the Teal and Woodcock take the February list to 64 now, that's the 4th best out of the 12 years of recording :-)