Pittswood Birds

My patch visit today lingered up until around mid day, when some heavy squally showers started to move through, up until then the weather wasn't too bad, with some short sunny spells even occurring  :-)

The four and a half hour patch visit gave me a tally of 45 bird species, with some nice patch species being found, but still nothing new for the year list. The highlight for the visit came late on in the morning, when I watched a COMMON BUZZARD being mobbed by a PEREGRINE - not everyday you see that !  KESTREL and SPARROWHAWK were also seen up hunting, a four raptor species visit is good going here :-)

Two Little Owls called from the Small Holding, and another was seen over at the Greenhouse Copse, while the lakes today had a couple of dozen MALLARDS, only two MOORHEN, a COOT, a CORMORANT, a KINGFISHER and the MUTE SWAN pair, a third Mute Swan was seen flying over after I left the lake area, probably not one of the pair on the lake though.

Most of the regulars showed up as I walked through the Scrubby Woods, and then the Wet Woods, apart that is from Coal Tit and Greenfinch, they were however seen at my garden feeders this afternoon, so 47 species were actually recorded here today.

Speaking of my garden, I had not one but two SONGTHRUSH visit, they are a scarce species to visit my little wildlife reserve, and were the 22nd species this year to do so. I tried to get some shots of one of them, but in the poor light they didn't turn out too good, I had to dabble around at 1000 iso, and had to use some slow shutter speeds.

I'll post them up anyway, as they are they only photo's i've got left for the blog, those and this BLUE TIT effort - again with some poor light and slow shutter speeds  :-(

Up to eight Blue Tits feed on this fat feeder at same time

First thing this Songthrush did was to look up and check the ''Sprawk'' wasn't about!

Songthrush, a scarce visitor to my garden

Songthrush