Pittswood Birds

It started out quite bright this morning, rapidly turning cloudy and windy, but at least it stayed dry for my 3 and a half hour patch walk.

Fewer species were encountered today, 44 was a few down on recent days, but a couple of those were new for the March list, the first being a KESTREL (52) that was seen on the Greenhouse rooves early in the visit. The second was a LESSER BLACK BACKED GULL (53), seen flying over the Ashes lane Field as I headed over to the lakes, which, unfortunately were disturbed by the presence of fisherman, all that was on the water today were the reliable MUTE SWAN and COOT pair, a few MOORHENS and 4 MALLARDS, however a group of 5 CANADA GEESE dropped in as I was leaving.

One of the 5 Canada Geese

 There were a few SISKINS flying over the Scrubby Woods and Wet Woods, just 3 or 4 at a time, always giving away their presence with their calls. A MISTLETHRUSH was again observed nest building, and once again MANDARIN DUCKS were present in the Wet Woods, but only one pair were seen today.

Out on the Fields most of what was seen were flyovers, which included just one HERRING GULL, 12 BLACK HEADED GULLS and a pair of GREY HERONS. The LITTLE OWL was back on the old Shack, with another seen in the Greenhouse Copse later.

A skywatch provided evidence of migration, but not of arrivals, the FIELDFARE and REDWING seen heading NE were no doubt on their way back across the North Sea, hopefully they wont all go at once and some will still linger into the end of March, the mean average last sighting date for both Fieldfare and Redwing is the 31st March, so it's likely they will  :-) A couple of BUZZARDS were also seen on the skywatch, and three SKYLARKS got up to sing, but no sign of a Sparrowhawk this month yet.

There was just enough light to do some garden bird photography this afternoon, where I again hoped to get a nice, well focused, image of the male Lesser Redpoll, but as I waited for it to arrive, which it did, the light was already fading, so I again had to settle for images that aren't as clear as I wanted.

Here they are anyway!

Lesser Redpoll

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 It sat where I wanted it,but by then I was dabbling around with horribly low shutter speeds

I took an image of this GOLDFINCH whilst waiting for the Redpoll to turn up, and of course when the Siskins arrived I couldn't resist!

Goldfinch

Siskin, Male

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Siskin,  Female