Pittswood Birds

A day of two halves gave cloudy and cool conditions, with spits of rain in the morning, but by the afternoon it had cheered up a bit, with some warm sunshine.

I did a full patch walk, but only encountered 39 bird species, well down on what I would expect to find on a May visit, due mainly to the lack of summer birds that now breed on my patch. Of those that do, all were seen, those being WHITETHROAT, CHIFFCHAFF, BLACKCAP and SWALLOW.

A male MANDARIN DUCK was of note on the main lake, 15 CANADA GEESE were on one of the Ashes Lane Fields and the ROOKS at Migrant Alley had brought out their fledgling young, one more for the this years Successfully bred list.

Not much else to highlight from the visit today, no Kestrel was seen, and flyovers were few, the more notable ones being BUZZARD, GREY HERON and SKYLARK.

An afternoon visit to the Scrubby Woods in some warm sunshine, primarily to look for dragonflies, proved worthwhile, as I found and photographed a Hairy dragonfly, male and female Beautiful Demoiseles, plus both White-legged and Azure Damselflies, i'll save some of the latter photo's for another post, but here's a few of the Hairy Dragonfly, a scarce species on my patch, so I was pleased to get these shots  :-)