Pittswood Birds

A 3 hour visit from 07:30hrs was undertaken in clear, cold and frosty conditions, not a great deal is changing on my patch, but a few bits and pieces were of note.

 Cold and Frosty

The lakes were frozen over, apart from a small area on the ornamental lake that the MUTE SWAN family had made, this being utilised by a dozen MALLARD, a MOORHEN and the COOT pair.

BULLFINCH and NUTHATCH were the best of it in the Scrubby Woods, I'm still hoping to find a Woodcock here for the months list, time is running out though!

Crossing a very frosty Ashes Lane Field I saw a BUZZARD fly low over and alight in a small Oak Tree on the boundary, just 2 MEADOW PIPITS were seen on the grassland, the rest were found over at the Greenhouse Grounds where they mixed with a few PIED WAGTAILS and a GREY WAGTAIL, a good patch bird to find in any month. The female KESTREL was also seen, she posed for a couple of photo's, of which i'll post later in the week  :-)

The Greenhouse Copse was home to the LITTLE OWL again and as I photographed it a party of 5 YELLOWHAMMER flew over, a CORMORANT was also seen going over a bit later, as well as a few BLACK HEADED and HERRING GULLS, the former coming in to feed on the sheep pasture at Migrant Alley, along with the arriving STARLINGS and ROOKS.

 Black headed Gull

 Little Owl in the Greenhouse Copse

Nothing new for the months list today then, which stays at 59, only 4 years have worse totals than this, with 2006 having the same tally, but it is only half way through the month, so things should pick up...............hopefully!  I need just 2 new species for this Decembers list to bring the years monthly average species list, to 70, this has only been achieved in one of the previous twelve years, that being in 2010, when the I recorded an average of 70.25 species per month  :-)

The habitat devastation continues here, 20 mature Poplar trees have been chopped down. I used to watch the winter thrushes gathering at the tops of these before they dropped down to feed on the fields, nice hedgerow in the background too................NOT!!