Pittswood Birds

Saturday, 21 September 2013

The cloud cover persisted throughout my full patch walk this morning, only allowing the odd brief brighter interlude every now and then.

I spent 5 hours out, and in the end came away with 45 bird species, but they proved hard to find, especially early on. There has been a real exodus of CHIFFCHAFF since my last visit on Thursday, only three were found, the other late staying summer species the BLACKCAP was represented by just a single female, seen at the Greenhouse Grounds. The local SWALLOWS had also left, the only ones seen were obvious migrants, flying purposely SW along with the migrant HOUSE MARTINS, its always a bit sad when the local Swallows leave :-(

MEADOW PIPITS continue to arrive on my patch, some staying to feed in the Ashes Lane field, and on the sheep pasture at Migrant Alley, while others fly through, at one point 20-30 birds suddenly filled the air, the culprit obviously a SPARROWHAWK, but as I watched the Hawk, a BUZZARD also came through low, and one of the KESTREL pair flashed past, no wonder the birds were hard to find this morning !

A KINGFISHER and a GREY HERON were on the main lake, but little else of note was seen on the water. The Scrubby Woods and the Wet Woods provided me with most of the regular and familiar species between them, NUTHATCH, TREECREEPER, COAL TIT, GOLDCREST, BULLFINCH, GREAT SPOTTED and GREEN WOODPECKER all being found, but they only took the day list to 38, it took an hours skywatch over at my seat at Migrant Alley to make the list more respectable, with flyovers from HERRING GULL, STOCK DOVE, GREY LAG GOOSE, and PIED WAGTAIL, plus a GREENFINCH, the only one seen today flew into the Grenhouse Grounds. It was good to see 6 SKYLARK alight onto one of the paddocks, where the species of the day, YELLOW WAGTAIL also dropped down to feed, first 2, then there were 5 and finally 8 were feeding together, chasing the thousands of Craneflies that were swarming on the grass.

Photo opportunities were hard to come by this morning, and those that did were distant efforts, and in poor light, here they are though!

Meadow Pipit at the Greenhouse Grounds

Kestrel on the fenceline at Migrant Alley

I tried to get a few photo's from my garden feeding station this afternoon, the light was awful, and very little visited due to persistent Sparrowhawk attacks!