Pittswood Birds

Yet more rubbish summer weather to put up with on todays full patch walk, with strong, blustery winds and heavy showers rattling through early on, I suppose I must be thankful for the odd sunny spell that appeared though!

The visit produced a half decent tally of 46 species in all, one of those, a fly over immature CORMORANT (64), was a new species for the June list, which has now finally reached the mean average total for the 12 years, but is still languishing in joint 6th place, joint with June 2005.

The new part of my patch was good for a couple of singing YELLOWHAMMER, heard along High House Lane, where I also added HOUSE SPARROW to the years 'successfully bred' list. The bean fields and hedgerows produced the expected WHITETHROAT, CHIFFCHAFF and BLACKCAP of note, but was reasonably quiet otherwise.

Another new species was added to the 'successfully Bred' list as I crossed Migrant Alley, when a family of four recently fledged SWALLOWS were found sitting on one of the paddock fences, I just about manged these photo's, but the wind was blowing me around so much i'm surprised they are as focused as they are!

Three of the four newly fledged Swallows

Newly fledged Swallow

Newly fledged Swallow

My visit to the wooded areas of my patch was hard going, the wind roaring through the trees made it impossible to hear anything much at all, the lakes were quite busy though, I counted 29 CANADA GEESE, with five well grown young among them, also two GREYLAG GEESE had 3 well grown young with them, while the COOT pair were continuing to feed their 3 nearly fully grown young.

A short skywatch was had back over at Migrant Alley to end the visit, where LESSER BLACK BACKED and HERRING GULL were seen, as well as hunting KESTREL and SPARROWHAWK, a few SWIFTS and SWALLOWS fed over the sheep pasture but in the blustery conditions not much else was noted.

A few insect images were taken in the Scrubby woods.........

Male White-legged Damselfly

Male White-legged Damselfly

Cinnabar Moth

Cinnabar Moth