Pittswood Birds

A moderate to strong, westerly wind blew broken clouds across the sky for the first day of March, when I carried out a full patch walk.

During the four and a half hour walk I found 43 species, which is bang on average for a March full patch visit. Here's what was seen in the order they were found  :-

Leaving my house at 06:50hrs I headed along the 200m along ashes Lane, finding WOODPIGEON, JACKDAW, WREN, GREENFINCH, COLLARED DOVE, BLACKBIRD, SONGTHRUSH, CHAFFINCH, GOLDFINCH, BLUE TIT, ROBIN, DUNNOCK and GREAT TIT.

Dunnock

Walking across the Ashes lane Fields, a MEADOW PIPIT flew up and a SKYLARK sang from overhead, plus 10 MAGPIES were seen feeding on the sheep pasture. A walk through the Wet Woods provided me with MALLARD, MOORHEN, and GOLDCREST,  as well as a calling GREEN WOODPECKER and a drumming GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER.

 Goldcrest in the Wet Woods

Reaching the lakes, I added MUTE SWAN, COOT, and GREYLAG GOOSE, of which 5 were visiting, along with 16 CANADA GEESE and a KINGFISHER. The adjacent Scrubby Woods had COAL TIT, BULLFINCH, JAY, NUTHATCH, LONG TAILED TIT and a flyover HERRING GULL for the March list.

The next species wasn't added until I reached the Small Holding area, where I found 6 REDWING and the first STARLINGS of the month. High House Lane and the adjacent bean fields only added HOUSE SPARROW and flyover FIELDARE to the new months tally.

A walk around Migrant Alley was disappointing, someone or something had already been out and flushed everything, as very little was seen apart from a couple of flyover BLACK HEADED GULLS and ROOKS. I stopped at my seat and scanned the Greenhouse Copse, but there was no Little Owl there today. I watched a couple of BUZZARDS fly over, before walking the Greenhouse Grounds, where a pair of MISTLETHRUSH were found, plus a PIED WAGTAIL, the female KESTREL gave me views from just 15m away, so I took lots of images of it, but she proved to be the final species of my walk, despite not having at that point walked the Pub Field.

One of the Distant Mistlethrushes at the Greenhouse Grounds

Here's a few of the many Kestrel shots I took while she preened, i'll post more later in the week.