Pittswood Birds

The early fog lifted around 08:00hrs, leaving a clear, sunny sky for all of 20 mins, before cloud and drizzle rolled in.

The 3 hour full patch walk produced a slightly below par 41 species today, amongst those were a few interesting ones, mainly over at the lakes, where it was, for these lakes at least, exceptionally busy. The two MUTE SWANS remain on the Ornamental Lake, along with the KINGFISHER, plus a good count of 22 MALLARD, the first 2 CANADA GEESE (56) of the month were also seen. 6 more Mallard were on the Main Lake, with the 4 MANDARIN DUCK, and a GREY HERON sat on 'its' fir tree perch nearby. The Small lake had 4 more Mallard, plus 5 CORMORANT, that's the highest ever count i've had here, actually on the water. MOORHENS were scattered amongst the 3 water bodies, probably around 8 birds in all, as I said a very busy place today!

Not much else to note that was out of the ordinary, Greenfinch and Treecreeper were not seen today, but all the other regular woodland birds were found. The only raptor today was a male KESTREL hunting on the Pub Field, where it was good to see a flock of 28 REDWING, even if they were just flying over, they represented only the second record of this species for December.

SKYLARK and MEADOW PIPIT flew over Migrant Alley, always good to see these two species here, also flying over were 4 more Canada Geese. BULLFINCH, GREEN WOODPECKER, PIED WAGTAIL, PHEASANT, and SONGTHRUSH finished off the days list, all being found in the Greenhouse Grounds.

The Canada Geese added to the months list now take this December to joint last place out of the twelve years, joint with the Decembers of 2002 and 2003, which were the first years of studying my patch, hopefully there will be a few more new species turn up in the second half of the month  :-)

Hopeless for photo's today, and the 'blog folder' has run dry again  :-(