Pittswood Birds

At last some sunshine!!

View across the sheep pasture, looking from the Wet Woods

Yes, spring arrived today, and this afternoon I was out as soon as I had eaten lunch  :-)  My trip over to the lakes was rather quiet, but it just felt good to have some warm sun on my face. The Tree Nursery, that is to the left of the above photo, had just a couple of GREEN WOODPECKERS, a KESTREL and a few SONGTHRUSH of note. The field of sheep pasture, which is the field I stood in to take the above photo, had about 30 FIELDFARE feeding on it. The old shack you can see is where the Barn owl pellets were found, but no evidence of it has been seen since then. Behind the shack, to the right is the 'lonesome' pine tree where the Buzzard sometimes sits, behind the pine tree is the Pub Field, which was empty this afternoon.

On the Lakes today there were 2 pairs of CANADA GEESE, the COOT pair and a scattering of MOORHEN, but whilst I was there the feral BARNACLE GOOSE (53) dropped in, sadly it was alone, there is no sign of its Canada Goose 'mate' that it traveled with over the last couple of winters  :-(

I had a look around the Scrubby Woods, and was pleased to find the patch MARSH TIT (54), it will depart soon to breed elsewhere, but hopefully overwinter here again this year. GOLDCREST, COAL TIT, BULLFINCH and TREECREEPER were the best of the rest in the Scrubby Woods today.

I finished off over at the Greenhouse Grounds, where the regular stuff was seen, WRENS, DUNNOCKS, ROBINS, GREAT TITS, BLUE TITS, another Goldcrest, a PIED WAGTAIL and lots of BLACKBIRDS, but the surprise for the afternoon was the Small Tortoiseshell butterfly I saw there, my second flutter already this year. I had a look in the nearby Greenhouse Copse to find the Little Owls, but they are hiding up well this month and were not located, however, to make up for that A LITTLE EGRET was seen, it flew low over and settled in the Drainage ditch that runs along the NW border of my patch, it stayed only briefly before flying up into a large oak tree just off patch, thats the third sighting of one this year  :-)

I got home with plenty of light left in the afternoon, and took over the garden shed from a mate who was 'borrowing' it for the afternoon, I wasn't sat down long when the Sprawk arrived, so not much else was seen after that, although a NUTHATCH (55) did come in, grabbed a nut and quickly fleed with it!

A nice afternoon overall, and the three species added to the months list, were in addition to the LINNETS (56) that flew from the Tree Nursery early this morning as I passed on the way to work  :-)

Garden photo's for today :-

Sparrowhawk - I had just seconds to get onto it as it sat on the garden fence

I just had time to up the exposure compensation to +1,

But didn't have time to zoom out to get the whole bird in shot :-(

Great Tit

My old favourite was back, the Green Woodpecker  :-)