Pittswood Birds

Low cloud and a stiff breeze made it feel a lot cooler than recent mornings, the cloud not lifting until after 11:00hrs, by which time my patch walk was over  :-(

It was an extremely dull and quiet visit, its normally quiet at this time of year, but today was particularly so. A WHITETHROAT was glimpsed along Ashes lane early on, but none sang today, just one CHIFFCHAFF sang, that was from the Scrubby Woods, but there were a few BLACKCAPS still singing around the patch.

A LITTLE OWL was seen on a fence post near the old shack in the Ashes Lane Field, and the KESTREL pair were watched taking food to their young at the Greenhouse Grounds. I added YELLOWHAMMER (60) to the months list when one was seen at the very top of an Oak tree along High House lane, belting out its merry little song, the 60th species for the month, moving this Julys tally onto 10th place out of 12   :-) I might add Turtle Dove to that list, but an hour searching in the Scrubby Woods for the pair seen last month proved fruitless. Cormorant or Peregrine are also possible, and with those in mind I had an hours skywatch from 10:00hrs, very little was moving about though, just LESSER BLACK BACKED GULL, and a few HERRING GULLS went over. More SWIFTS were around today, I dont think these were migrant birds, and the 30-40 SWALLOWS seen certainly weren't, most of them were immature, locally bred birds.

Not much else to say about todays patch walk, the busiest place was the Scrubby Woods, with the likes of GOLDCREST, TREECREEPER, NUTHATCH, COAL TIT, MISTLE THRUSH, and BULLFINCH the pick of what was seen there.

This afternoon I had a walk over to the Greenhouses to look for Butterflies and Damselflies, I found quite a few of each, but nothing new for the year, Damsels recorded were - Large Red, White-legged, Azure, Common Blue and Blue Tailed, the latter of which keeps avoiding my camera!

Butterflies were plenty too, but again nothing new for the year, the most common seen flutter was the Meadow Brown, but that was almost matched by the numbers of Small Tortoiseshell, they were in every clump of Thistle and Bramble I looked at, what a turn around for this species, two years ago they were very rarely seen here. Comma, Speckled Wood, Red Admiral, Small White, Large Skipper, and Small Skipper were the other species seen.

I took a few photo's of course  :-)

Large Skipper, a dark specimen, do they get darker with age ?

Small Skipper

Common Blue Damselfly, Male

Common Blue Damselfly , Female

White-legged Damselfly , Female

Large Red Damselfly , Male