Pittswood Birds

I had a day off patch today, and went out with a mate to visit Sevenoaks Wildfowl Reserve, as well as the reservoir at Bough Beech. The main reason for visiting Sevenoaks was to try and get a Kingfisher photo from one of the hides, but although we had many sightings of one on the other lakes, none showed up on the photographic perches provided for it outside the hide. The only photo's I took were of these MOORHENS and a distant COOT  :-)

Moorhen with young

Moorhen with young

Coot

A pleasant walk around the reserve made for a nice change of scenery, seeing 40 bird species, nothing spectacular, best bird was probably the YELLOW WAGTAIL that flew over. I spent some time chasing dragonflies whilst there, getting some images of a Migrant Hawker.

Not the best efforts, but it remained quite high up, and i'm quite short!

Migrant Hawker

I also saw this large Hoverfly on some Buddleia, a Volucella Zonaria I believe .

Volucella Zonaria

At Bough Beech Reservoir the water had receded somewhat, leaving some good wader attracting muddy margins, and indeed, there were some, 7 GREEN SANDPIPERS and 2 COMMON SANPIPERS in all, all far to distant for any sort of photo though. Not much else was there to excite, a BUZZARD and a SPARROWHAWK flew over, and a GREY WAGTAIL was about the best of it.

Later in the afternoon I took my friend over to the Greenhouse Grounds back on my patch, as he wanted to photograph the Brown Argus Butterflies that are to be found here. Whilst he did that, I took a few photo's of the flutters myself, here's a few, but i'll post the rest tomorrow, as it looks like being a non-camera day  :-) :-)

Clouded Yellow

Clouded Yellow

Clouded Yellow

Common Blue

Common Blue

Small Tortoiseshell