Saturday 27 July 2013

This morning was overcast, but with little wind it felt warm enough to be out in just a tee shirt, even at 06:30hrs.

In my five hour patch visit I recorded an impressive total of 52 species, nothing new for the month or year, but most bird species that live on my patch turned out, except for Spotted Flycatcher, Long Tailed Tit and Mistle Thrush.

The big day list was helped by having the likes of LESSER BLACK BACKED, HERRING and BLACK HEADED GULL flyover Migrant Alley, as well as YELLOWHAMMER, GREY HERON, SKYLARK and HOUSE MARTIN. Also at Migrant Alley were the GREYLAG and CANADA GEESE, which numbered 51 and 28 respectively.

The summer birds of CHIFFCHAFF, BLACKCAP and WHITETHROAT were all heard at the Greenhouse Grounds as well as the Scrubby Woods, the only other summer birds seen were around 40 SWALLOWS and 2  SWIFTS.

The raptor species were represented by the KESTREL family at the Greenhouse grounds, plus a single SPARROWHAWK up hunting, two single BUZZARDS soaring made it three for the day, unless you count the LITTLE OWL, two of these were found, one at the old shack in the Ashes Lane Field, the other in the Small holding.

Two BULLFINCH families were noted in the Scrubby Woods, and the walk to get there via the Small Holding and Wet Woods provided me with most of the other scarcer patch species, like  GOLDCREST, TREECREEPER, NUTHATCH, and COAL TIT, as well as the less scarcer but sometimes hard to find species of GREAT SPOTTED and GREEN WOODPECKER, JAY, PHEASANT, PIED WAGTAIL and STOCK DOVE.

Probably the most satisfying sighting this morning was seeing an immature GREY WAGTAIL as I walked home past the Greenhouses, it was mobbing 2 Kestrels on the roof of one of the glass houses - brave bird!

In the poor light this morning I didn't take the camera out, but around midday the sun started to shine, making it feel very warm, so off I went to get some Butterfly photo's over at the Greenhouse Grounds  :-)
Large White
Gate Keeper
Comma
Comma
Small Copper - The same individual as yesterday
I also came across the only odonata of the day.
Common Blue Damselfly
Common Blue Damselfly

8 comments:

Marc Heath said...

Lots of quality in those shots Warren, liking the Comma underwing shot, very nice.

Warren Baker said...

Thanks Marc,
Lots of the more common Butterflies about today, but none of the Damsels and Dragons, apart from the one shown.

Anonymous said...

Superb photos Warren, very, very nice indeed :-) Looks like you might get some heavy storms in your neck of the woods tonight.

Warren Baker said...

Cheers David,
Its chucking down now. I suppose we need it though :-)

Greenie said...

Warren ,
Certainly were lots of butterflies about yesterday .
Hope they survived last night's downpours .

Phil said...

Well that's the rain over with Warren. Lets get back to summer now.
Some lovely shots again, how do you get stuff to pose like that? :-)

Marianne said...

Gorgeous photos. Well done on a good bird day too :)

Warren Baker said...

cheers marianne :-)