Pittswood Birds

Wall to wall blue skies provided some hot sunshine throughout my patch visit this morning, all very pleasant indeed  :-)

My hunt for successfully bred bird species, to add to this years list, was not fruitful at all today, nor was my attempt to add new bird species to this moths list, surely i'll add Long Tailed Tit soon! Yellowhammer, House Martin and possibly a flyover Cormorant are species I may well get this month, but none of them showed today either, I still need two more species for the month to reach the lowest July tally!

So what did I see today, well, not much at all really, a few CHIFFCHAFF and BLACKCAP continued to sing from various locations, and the WHITETHROATS were still belting out their short but cheerful series of rushed notes, especially the two males at the Greenhouse Grounds, where the KESTRELS were busy hunting small mammals for their hungry brood.

Young Blackcaps and Chiffchaffs were seen being fed in the Scrubby Woods, where BULLFINCH TREECREEPER, COAL TIT and NUTHATCH were heard calling, a SPARROWHAWK was seen gliding just above the tree line too.

HERRING GULL and LESSER BLACK BACKED GULL were the only flyovers today, and just two SWIFTS were seen, probably local birds.

As not much was being seen birdwise, I spent some time chasing Butterflies and Damselflies again, and found my first Small Skipper Butterfly of the year, the 17th Butterfly species on patch for 2013. I also confirmed a Brown Hawker Dragonfly for the years Odonata list, and that is now on 12 species.

Small Tortoiseshell, plenty of these were on the wing today :-)

Small Tortoiseshell

Large Skipper

My first Small Skipper this year, not a very good shot but I only got one chance  :-)

Common Blue Damselfly, after an encounter with a spiders web

Common Blue Damselfly

Azure Damselfly, mating