Pittswood Birds

A morning of showers, rainbows and occasional sunny spells meant not much time was spent out on my quagmire of a patch today, yet more persistent rain was not welcome this afternoon :-(

I visited the lakes, as there is always a slim chance of finding a new duck species for the year there, but there wasn't one on this visit, however a new COOT had arrived, and looked to be getting along nicely with the one already there, hopefully they will pair up and breed as they have done for the past two seasons  :-)  The MUTE SWAN pair are still hanging around, as is the KINGFISHER, which I watched catch a fish and devour it head first. A CORMORANT almost dropped in, but thought better of it, but apart from that it was just MALLARDS and MOORHENS this morning.

A walk through the Scrubby Woods, then the Wet Woods was had, hoping for a new species for my year list, but only the regulars were found, so I decided on a sky watch over at Migrant Alley, as this is the next most likely activity to produce a year tick. I was there for 90 minutes, dodging showers, but alas the hoped for flyover Lapwing or Grey Heron were not forthcoming, the best I got were a couple of BUZZARD, a KESTREL, a few MEADOW PIPITS, two SKYLARK, of which one sang, and the usual to and froing of ROOKS, JACKDAWS, WOODPIGEONS, HERRING GULLS and BLACK HEADED GULLS.  I checked up on the LITTLE OWL at the Greenhouse Copse, and found it on it's usual perch, then headed off home.........wet and muddy!

There were a couple of short lived sunny spells around mid day, so as I ate lunch I took a few garden photo's to keep the blog pages brightened!  The SPARROWHAWK came in and alighted in its ambush tree whilst I was watching, all the Tit species then sat in the adjacent Elder tree alarm calling and mobbing, finally I got up and flushed the Sprawk out for them, which meant an onrush of at least 23 BLUE TITS to the feeders! They were everywhere!

STARLING, singing away in the sun

Its repertoire of song included the quack of Mallard and the kewick of Tawny Owl

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ROBIN

GREENFINCH