Pittswood Birds

Another very wet and windy mornings patch visit, the ground is now saturated and cant hold anymore water, leaving large puddles on some of the fields, these I checked for some exotic wader, like Lapwing or Snipe, maybe even a Green Sandpiper, but I had no luck with that !

Over on the Lakes there was a reasonable amount of activity with 20 or so MALLARD, 6 MOORHEN, 4 pairs of MANDARIN DUCK, 2 CANADA GEESE, a CORMORANT and the KINGFISHER, while the Scrubby Woods was much quieter than recent visits, just the COAL TIT and GOLDCREST were seen of the scarcer woodland Species.

I made some effort to have a sky watch from my seat over at Migrant Alley in the latter stages of my walk, when the rain finally ceased and the sun came out. My 40 minutes spent there was rewarded with my first LESSER BLACK BACKED GULL (60) of the month, which flew over with a mixed group of gulls, BLACK HEADED and HERRING being with them. A few MEADOW PIPITS also went over, as did another Cormorant, 3 REDWINGS were nice to see, just the 3rd record of these this month.

Quite a disappointing visit really, but with the weather being so wet and warm, I cant see much chance of the expected winter species turning up here. The weather over the next couple of days is expected to get even wetter and windier, so any visits look as though they will again be on the short side!

At least I added the Lesser Black Backed Gull to the December list today, which is now on 60, putting it in 7th place out of 12, however I think i'll struggle to reach the mean monthly species count of the past 5 years, which is 68.

I tried for some photo's from my garden this afternoon, the warm weather means little activity at my feeders, and the SPARROWHAWK was hanging around again, keeping away what was hungry! However I did just get a few snaps of this JACKDAW on the fat logs  :-)

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Jackdaw