Pittswood Birds

It was cooler and cloudier this morning, when a moderate breeze brought some light showery rain by mid morning.

Before the rain arrived, I visited Migrant Alley, where after a circuit of the paddocks and sheep pasture, I had a 90 minute sky watch, in the hope of seeing some early bird movements. The circuit of the fields only produced the normal stuff - ROOKS, JACKDAWS, CARRION CROWS, WOODPIGEONS, the 6 GREYLAG GEESE, a flock of 34 STARLINGS, and a few LINNETS, the most notable sighting was of 23 PIED WAGTAILS on one of the paddocks, not quite the 50+ seen last week, but a good number still.

My sky watch did provide a migrant bird, another SISKIN, that called as it flew over heading SE, a few visiting species were also recorded, those being HERRING GULL and BLACK HEADED GULL, plus GREY HERON and CORMORANT, while the resident species of SKYLARK, SWIFT, SWALLOW, STOCK DOVE, COLLARED DOVE, and a surprise BULLFINCH also flew over. The three resident raptors of BUZZARD, KESTREL ( female adult plus the two young) and the SPARROWHAWK, which was clutching a prey item were all seen as well. Behind my sky watching seat, in the Greenhouse Grounds, a BLACKCAP sang, a CHIFFCHAFF called and the WHITETHROAT was carrying food, for it's young, but I still haven't had a sighting of them, frustratingly!

After the rain showers passed I walked over to the Scrubby Woods and lakes, noting on the way that the TREECREEPER nest in the Wet Woods had fledged its young, three newly fledged birds were scrambling around a large Oak tree there. At The lakes just one MALLARD, two MOORHEN families and the six Greylag Geese from Migrant Alley were on the water. While in the Scrubby Woods it was not much better, I heard Chiffchaff and Blackcap singing, plus NUTHATCH calling, a party of LONG TAILED TITS didn't have any surprise species with it, in the end I set to looking for Dragons and Butterflies, but the wind was a bit strong really, however, I did find a Brown hawker Dragonfly, which I waited patiently for to land, it eventually did, but I narrowly failed to get a photo, it took off just as I was positioning myself, maybe one for another day!

In the end I didn't get a single photo of anything today, fortuantely, on a visit to the Greenhouse grounds yesterday evening, I had a close encounter with one of the Kestrel youngsters and filled my boots with images of it, I hope you like Kestrel images, I took 173 photo's! Here's my top 10 of those!