Pittswood Birds

Clear skies for an hour or so this morning gave way to an increasingly cloudy sky, giving progressively heavier showers as the day went on, some of which included thunder and hail.

Dodging the showers for 5 hours, while on a full patch visit, gave me an excellent total of 52 bird species, but nothing new for the month or year list. Todays full patch walk was the 50th of the year, of those walks, 20 species have been seen on every visit, these being the core species of my patch.

There were some highlights to the bird list, despite none being new for May, with the pair of TUFTED DUCKS on the main lake, where there was also a male MANDARIN DUCK and two pairs of CANADA GEESE with young in tow, one pair also had a GREYLAG GOOSE chaperoning their goslings.

Just about every species that could be recorded, was recorded in the Wet Woods and Scrubby Woods, the best of those being, NUTHATCH, TREECREEPER, LONG TAILED TIT, COAL TIT, GOLDCREST, BULLFINCH, CHIFFCHAFF, BLACKCAP, JAY, STOCK DOVE, TURTLE DOVE ( that purred for over minute!), GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER, GREEN WOODPECKER, SONGTHRUSH and MISTLETHRUSH.

The LITTLE OWL was sitting on a fence post between the Greenhouse Grounds and Greenhouse Copse, eventually it flew into the latter. The fields and Paddocks of Migrant Alley were un remarkable today, just a few LINNETS and Corvids about. My sky watch was pretty quiet, the WHITETHROATS sang from the Greenhouse Grounds behind my seat as I watched a few HERRING GULLS go over and a couple of LESSER BLACK BACKED GULLS. I also saw a flock of 8 HOUSE MARTINS and a few pairs of SWIFTS. The local BUZZARD pair were up, being joined by a third individual for a short time, the male KESTREL and a SPARROWHAWK made up the rest of the raptor species seen today.

I didn't get a single photo today, so here's a few from Sunday. These are the Immature White-legged Damselflies  :-)