Pittswood Birds

This morning was heavily overcast and cool, with a moderate chilly wind blowing.

My usual early trip to Migrant Alley was made, but a stop off at the Greenhouse Grounds before that, had me finding the immature GREY WAGTAIL there again, as well as the KESTREL pair sitting on the greenhouses together.

Entering the paddocks and sheep pasture at Migrant Alley, all the fence lines and fence posts were scanned, but nothing was on them apart from the ROOKS, JACKDAWS, CARRION CROWS, a few LINNETS and a couple of new broods of SWALLOWS.

Young Swallow

Walking a circuit of Migrant Alley I noted LESSER BLACK BACKED, BLACK HEADED and HERRING GULLS flying over, then a white flash dashed ahead of me and up popped a WHEATEAR on to the fenceline, although I had good views, it was too dull for a decent photo, but I enjoyed watching for a while as it dropped onto the sheep pasture to feed.

I made my way over to the Wet Woods, Scrubby Woods and lakes, but the latter again had a bunch of fisherman present on the small lake, as a consequence nothing but the MUTE SWANS, COOTS, MOORHENS and a couple of MALLARDS were seen, those all being on the ornamental lake, although a fleeting glimpse of a KINGFISHER was also had. It was pretty quiet in both the wooded areas, virtually nothing called, just NUTHATCH, BULLFINCH and CHIFFCHAFF of note. At least 4 BLACKCAPS were seen feeding on Elder Berries, plus a WHITETHROAT had joined them. A COAL TIT flew across in front of me, flying up into a fir tree, where it started a chase with a GOLDCREST, that was about as exciting as it got here  :-)

The light had got a bit better by 10:00hrs, so I headed back over to Migrant Alley to try and get some Wheatear photo's, I passed through the Greenhouse Grounds again, finding 4 more Whitethroats for the day, plus another Chiffchaff. Out on the paddocks, I soon found the Wheatear, but was double delighted to find another two had joined it ! This made getting a few images that much more easier! The Swallows were gathering on the fence line too, so I took a quick photo of one of the youngsters, (above) but they weren't too approachable today.

After having my fill of photographing the 3 Wheatear, I Made my way over to my seat for a sky watch, which was quite eventful, I saw two SWIFTS feed quite low down over the sheep pasture, and heard, then saw a YELLOW WAGTAIL fly over. In the 90 minutes I was watching, frequent small flocks of HOUSE MARTINS went over, around 30-35 birds in each flock and most of those flocks had a few SAND MARTINS amongst them. A SPARROWHAWK was the only other raptor seen today.

Not the most attractive perch  :-)

Once these birds got used to the camera, they became quite approachable

I tried to get different poses, this bird was quite a show off!

Back to the more classic fence line pose  :-)