Pittswood Birds

The intended full patch walk was postponed this morning as it was unexpectedly raining first thing! I did get out around 07:30hrs once the rain had eased, only to be caught out when it started up again! I ended up stranded under the poly tunnels at the Greenhouse Grounds for 40 minutes, eventually making a dash for home.

Whilst sheltering under the poly tunnels I noted a few birds about, one was a KESTREL that sheltered nearby in an Ash Tree, a male BULLFINCH dropped in, alighting on some brambles for a few seconds, and a troop of LONG TAILED TITS flitted by, unconcerned by the rain. I could hear a SKYLARK singing from the nearby Ashes Lane Field as well as a SONGTHRUSH that sang from an adjacent garden, BLACKCAPS and WHITETHROATS were all actively collecting food for their recently fledged youngsters.

A few hours later I was back out, the rain had turned more showery, so I thought I go and have a sky watch from my seat at Migrant alley. Against the grey backdrop of the sky I saw many SWIFTS and a few HOUSE MARTINS, as well as the local SWALLOWS. A GREY HERON slowly flapped its way over, along with a few HERRING GULLS and three single LESSER BLACK BACKED GULLS, but the bird of the day was the HOBBY (59), watched being mobbed by irrate Swallows as it flew steadily over my vantage point, this is the first Hobby i've seen here since May 12th, and brings the July bird species tally to 59, putting it in 12th place out of the 13 Julys recorded, still ten behind the record July tally. I think i'll do well to reach the average species total for the previous 5 Julys, that being 65, but there's a lot of the month left, so you never know   :-)

Later this afternoon it brighten up a bit, all a bit too late for any proper bird watching, but I spent an enjoyable time chasing various species of Butterflies around the Greenhouse Grounds and Ashes lane Field, which included Peacock Butterfly, Red Admiral, Small Tortoiseshell, Comma, Gatekeeper, Meadow Brown, Small White, Large White, Large Skipper, Small Skipper and Essex Skipper, it was the latter I wanted to get a definitive photo of, but failed to!

One animal I didn't expect to see in broad daylight was the Roe Deer, no doubt the one I saw the other week, once again I only had my 100mm macro lens on the camera, but I took a record shot !

Roe Buck

Small Skippers

Small Skippers again

Another Small Skipper

Comma

Ive set up another page to show the last images from my Wales trip which are of Siskins, you can click here to see them, or click on the tab under the header photo at the top of the page labelled 'Siskins'   I'll put a couple up to kick off  :-)