Pittswood Birds

A very enjoyable patch visit was made today, under partly cloudy skies and a cool wind.

My early walk around Migrant Alley was at first very quiet, but it soon livened up, when I found a fantastic WHINCHAT (98, 72) sitting on one of the paddock fence lines, the first of the year  :-)  A passage of YELLOW WAGTAILS was noted flying over, giving their distinctive call, hard to tell how many, but at least 6 were heard. There was no doubt about the number that dropped down into one of the paddocks though, 5 of these little beauties fed around the horses feet  :-)  I decided to stay around the paddocks and sheep pasture for a while, which paid off, as I noted firstly a SWIFT, then a SAND MARTIN fly through, better still, a trio of MISTLETHRUSHES (73) were also seen as they flew past, at last joining the months list! SPARROWHAWK and BUZZARD were seen up hunting whist I sat at my sky watching seat, and a KESTREL was noted sitting on one of the greenhouses, the grounds of which had a CHIFFCHAFF and at least 5 WHITETHROATS feeding in them.

I eventually moved off and visited the Scrubby Woods, where most of the regular woodland birds showed up, apart from Long Tailed Tit and Coal Tit, a few BLACKCAPS and another 2 Chifchaff were seen feeding on the Elder Berries, but nothing more exciting was happening. The lakes were only glanced over, as fisherman were around the small lake, ensuring nothing new would be visiting the other nearby lakes.

I made my way back over to Migrant Alley to see if I could get a better photo of the Whinchat, as my earlier efforts had been thwarted by a large cloud moving over, taking away the light, on the way I passed along the drainage ditch that runs through the Ashes Lane Field and as I stopped to look at a LITTLE OWL sitting on the distant old shack, I managed to flush up a SEDGE WARBLER (99,74), another brilliant bird to have visit my patch, and another year tick, that's three in two days! Just 1 more species needed now to make the magic 100 mark  :-)

These are the Whinchat photo's I took today, the first three were taken in the morning when it was cloudy, the rest were taken under slightly better light later on, there are quite few images, I hope you like Whinchats!  :-)