Saturday 9 August 2014

A five hour patch walk from 06:15hrs to 11:30hrs was a pleasant enough affair in the partly cloudy, but warm conditions.

With 66 species already found for this month, it will be quite difficult to add many more, hopefully a few passage birds will visit and I still have to find Long Tailed Tit and Mistlethrush. It was these two species that I was on the lookout for this morning, but they didn't feature on the 45 species I encountered, in fact it was a very mediocre visit today, the best bird for my patch was a flyover YELLOWHAMMER, only the second seen this month. Other flyovers from HERRING GULL, BLACK HEADED GULL, LESSER BLACK BACKED GULL, BUZZARD, and SPARROWHAWK helped pack out the day list a bit.

Some of the 50-60 SWALLOWS were sitting on the telephone wires along Ashes Lane, but the bulk of them were on the Greenhouses, just two HOUSE MARTINS were with them today. A couple of WHITETHROAT and a CHIFFCHAFF were the best of it at the Greenhouse Grounds, with the only BLACKCAPS seen today being in the Scrubby Woods, where another couple of Chiffchaffs were also seen and another Whitethroat.

KINGFISHER, GREY HERON and 8 CANADA GEESE had joined the MUTE SWAN family, COOT pair, MOORHENS and two MALLARDS on the lakes, around the egde of which TREECREEPER, GOLDCREST and COAL TIT were heard to sing.

Tomorrow morning looks to be wet and windy, but the afternoon may provide an opportunity for a late visit, maybe something will be blown in by the low pressure system as it goes through, could be good for a sky watch ?

I took a few photo's this morning, the light was fantastic early on. Here's a few, i'll save the rest for tomorrow .

Swallow on the lines, early on today



DUNNOCK
Grey Heron

1 comment:

Pete Woodruff said...

Always enjoy a peruse through your posts Warren.

Many parts of Britain will be on storm alert tomorrow (Sunday) as the remains of Hurricane Bertha track across the Atlantic.