Pittswood Birds

I made a 3 hour patch visit this morning, under cloudy skies and much chillier conditions than of recent days.

I walked over to the lakes first thing, via the Small Holding and Wet Woods, where as usual at this time of year only the regular resident birds were seen, BLACKBIRDS, WRENS, ROBINS, BLUE TITS and the like.

Over on the lakes there were a few visiting species to be found, a GREY HERON was at the small lake, a CORMORANT fished on the main lake, where there was also a lone CANADA GOOSE, while on the ornamental lake a KINGFISHER called frequently, apart from those, just a few MALLARD, MOORHEN and the MUTE SWAN family were present.

I watched a pair of BULLFINCH feeding on old shriveled Blackberries at the Scrubby Woods, a couple of pairs of GOLDCRESTS were also seen there, as was a pair of COAL TITS, a single NUTHATCH was calling from cover too. I watched 6 SISKIN drop into a nearby Alder tree, then as I watched them, I became aware of the ''chack'' ''chack'' calls from FIELDFARES (53), 8 of them passed high overhead, the first this month  :-)

I didn't find much of note as I crossed the Ashes lane Field, but peering over the boundary hedgerow into the Pub Field gave me good views of a BUZZARD, which flew up and sat on a fence pole.

I did a circuit of Migrant Alley, where a flock of 80+ BLACK HEADED GULLS were on the sheep pasture, I scanned them in the hope of finding a Med Gull among them, there wasn't one, but as a consolation I did find a single COMMON GULL (54) for the months list  :-)  Before settling down for a short sky watch, I looked through the the last piece of ''untidied'' area at the Greenhouse Grounds, where among the old Raspberry canes I found a female BLACKCAP (55) feeding on some Raspberries that had regrown , a nice addition for the November list  :-) Not too much was seen during my sky watch though, just 3 MEADOW PIPITS and the odd SKYLARK, however a bit of a surprise was had when 2 YELLOWHAMMERS dropped down into the tall hedge that is between my seat and the Greenhouse grounds, these are the first Yellowhammers recorded on my patch rather than over it since last winter!

Just a few garden images left for the blog now, with little decent light for photography it could be a while before the camera comes out again!

 Nuthatch