Pittswood Birds

A hard frost this morning was followed by a morning of sunshine, but temperatures have still to recover to where they should be in March.

Of course, by the time I finished work the cloud had rolled in, and just a few sunny spells were had for my two hour patch visit this afternoon. As yesterday, there was a noisy chainsaw gang in the Wet woods, so I had a repeat of yesterdays visit, that was a walk of the Tree Nursery, Pub Field and Migrant Alley, finishing up with a sky watch from my seat there.

There was nothing found even remotely linked to any arrival of spring migrants, but I suppose its still a little bit early yet, normally the earliest spring arrivals on my patch are recorded in the second half of March, so I'll have to be patient !

Nothing out of the ordinary was found at the Tree Nursery or Pub Field, the GREEN WOODPECKERS and SONGTHUSHES are finding food plentiful here, along with the BLACKBIRDS, DUNNOCKS, WRENS and ROBINS. GREAT and BLUE TITS were found along the hedgerow dividing the Pub Field and Tree Nursery, whilst the big pile of manure in the Pub Field had attracted 4 STOCK DOVES and a dozen or so JACKDAWS.

At the paddocks and sheep pasture at Migrant Alley there were still around 100 BLACK HEADED GULLS, with 4 COMMON GULLS and 8 HERRING GULLS, but I couldn't see the Med. Gulls today. Also on the fields was a huge (for here) flock of about 600 STARLING, with them were around 50 FIELDFARE and a handful of REDWING, plus the usual 50-60 WOODPIGEON and 100+ ROOKS, so it was quite busy, that was until a large female SPARROWHAWK came over and everything went up en mass. This happened twice more, before all the birds left for good to find a safer field  :-)

During my skywatch, I noted the male Sparrowhawk displaying with the female high above the fields, the best of the species seen going over were a GREY HERON, a CORMORANT and a YELLOWHAMMER. I saw the male KESTREL up hunting, but no sign of the female, I wonder if she is busy in the nearby nest box where they bred last year - fingers crossed  :-)

The year list and the month list both have stalled over recent days, the former is stuck at 75, but is still a good tally for the time of year, while the latter has stalled at 58 and is languishing in joint 9th place out of 12. March is only half way through yet though, so the mean average species tally recorded for the month should be possible to reach - that is 62.75  :-)

Nothing met with the camera today, apart from few poor shots of the Black Headed Gulls that were just too poor to show :-)  So its back to the garden bird photo's. These were taken on Tuesday, and show what perched on the 'Blog log' that afternoon

LONG TAILED TIT

ROBIN

GREAT TIT