Pittswood Birds

Heavy rain around dawn moved off to leave a brighter couple of hours, but a gale force wind blew, and before midday more heavy rain moved in to round off a terrible days weather!

In the brighter couple of hours I made it over to the lakes and Scrubby Woods, but in the strong wind not much was seen. A couple of CORMORANT fished on the main Lake, and a few MALLARDS dabbled about under the tree overhang. The MUTE SWAN and COOT pairs remain on the Ornamental Lake, along with more Mallard and a couple of MOORHENS, whilst the Small Lake only had a few more Mallard and Moorhens present.

I soon moved off to go over to the fields and paddocks of Migrant Alley, in the hope of something different being blown over on the wind and although quite a few BLACK HEADED GULLS and HERRING GULLS enjoyed the turbulent sky, nothing else did!  A mixed flock of Gulls did drop in onto the sheep pasture at one point, again Mostly Black headed and Herring Gulls, but there were also 4 COMMON GULLS seen with them, a good bird to get on my patch.

I soon got fed up with being buffeted by the gale, and made my way back home through the Greenhouse Grounds, noting a couple of MEADOW PIPIT, a PIED WAGTAIL and at least 7 DUNNOCKS all feeding in the piles of last years discarded Raspberry canes. I also saw the KESTREL pair on the Raspberry support poles, its been a while since they sat there.

Other than that, not much else was achieved today, I did get some poor photo's of the LESSER REDPOLL that came to feed at my garden feeding station, a nice male, with a pink breast, but the light was going by then and I had to take the photo's through the double glazing, making the images look soft, never a good idea!

Lesser Redpoll, it moved from the trellis.............

....to one of my perches, pity it was in front of the green bird table!

Better than no photo at all though  :-)

I got the window open, but the Redpoll flew off, so it was back to the STARLING.........

.......................and the GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER

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