Pittswood Birds

There were frequent light to moderate showers all day today, with just a few sunny spells thrown in, but at least the wind had dropped considerably.

Early on during my walk, I found a pair of CHAFFINCH feeding a newly fledged youngster over at the Greenhouse Grounds, where the KESTREL was seen hunting and the LESSER WHITETHROAT sang again. On the adjacent sheep pasture and paddocks of Migrant Alley, 15 GREYLAG GEESE were grazing, along with a single CANADA GOOSE, also, a few of the ROOK pairs had brought their new fledged young across from their rookery nests - the ''successful breeding'' list for 2014 moves to 14 now  :-)

I watched a GREY HERON fly over the Ashes Lane Field whilst I was walking to the Lakes and woods area, as I did so I became aware of the raucous calls of a RING NECKED PARAKEET (69), and one was duly seen as it flew over heading NW.

The Wet Woods and Scrubby Woods between them provided the likes of NUTHATCH, GOLDCREST, BULLFINCH, LONG TAILED TIT, JAY, MISTLETHRUSH, BLACKCAP and CHIFFCHAFF, as well as all the common regulars, and nest full of noisy GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKERS sounded like they were almost ready to fledge  :-) Once again, as it has done for the past 3 weeks or so, the TAWNY OWL hooted from its roost site.

Whilst scanning the lakes, checking up on the COOT and MUTE SWANS, I thought I heard the brief song of an acrocephalus warbler, which on investigation turned out to be my first REED WARBLER (90,70) of the year! A good bird to get here, especially on spring passage, they seem to pass through my patch quite late, the median first sighting date for Reed Warbler here is the 18 May.

Another sky watch was had later in the morning, but it was not as good as yesterdays, I only saw two Raptor species, those being SPARROWHAWK and COMMON BUZZARD, only one Gull species was seen flying over, that was a HERRING GULL. It was still another good day though, 51 species were found, and the months list now on 70, which moves up into joint 4th place, joint with 2012. The Reed Warbler takes the year list to 90, which puts it in 11th place out of 13, but there lots of the year left to go yet  :-)

Not much chance of any photo's today, but here's what I took.

Juvenile STARLING

WREN, collecting nest material

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Young Rabbit :-)