Pittswood Birds

After two weeks away in Wales, I arrived back home to Pittswood this afternoon, where after unpacking and doing all the things that needed attending to after a fortnight away, I started looking at the 1000 plus photo's that I took whilst on holiday!

One of the highlights from the holiday was a trip to Aberystwyth, in the hope of finding a chough to add to the Wales trip list, a list that ended just one short of our target of 100 bird species, although with the warm sunny weather that we experienced for the most part, the birds took a bit of back stage as we started to concentrate on finding Butterflies and Dragonflies. Many photo's were taken of them and i'll post separate pages on the blog for the Birds, Butterflies and Dragonflies in a few days when ive edited them, i'll put a few on the main page to brighten the posts up too  :-)

Anyway back to the Choughs!  After only an hours searching along the cliff edge, the Jackdaw type calling of Chough was soon picked up, and a family party were watched as they flew over the sea and then inland as they searched for food. After some waiting the Choughs finaly came near enough for a few record shots, but trouble was brewing.............

Chough......A bird species that I have never encountered before  :-)

After getting the above shots, we had hoped for the chance to improve on them, as the family group stayed in the vicinity, but tragedy struck when a pair of Peregrine Falcons arrived on the scene and despite some brave defence from the adult Choughs, one of the youngsters was snatched from the sky, an event that will surely be a once in a life time occurrence for me to witness, so it was a good job I had the camera with me to record events..............unfortunately, in my excitement, I stupidly left the settings on the camera from the last set of shots I was taking, and with the action taken place quite distantly over the sea my shots were all crap!!!!!  I'll post them up anyway, but you'll need to squint!  :-)

One of the adult choughs tries desperately to defend her youngster from the Peregrines

It was a futile effort though and the Peregrine took its chance with ease

The unfortunate Chough youngster was carried off, probably to feed the Peregrines own young

Quite a spectacle to witness, although a very saddening one