Pittswood Birds

No post yesterday, as I only had a short patch visit, the only bird of any note being the PEREGRINE, which flew NW over Migrant Alley, the rest of my day was spent at the Ashdown forest, where I had a very successful day Dragonfly hunting, taking many photo's, despite some poor light at times.

Back to this morning, where once again it was a cloudy start to the day, with a strong SW wind picking up, but it remained quite warm.

A walk around Migrant Alley early on didn't reveal any early passage birds, just a few LINNETS and STARLINGS plus the usual Corvids were out on the now quite parched looking sheep pasture and paddocks. I had an hours sky watch from my seat, hoping for my first Mistlethrush of the month to fly over, but no luck, they are difficult bird to find here in July. I watched a few HERRING GULLS, BLACK HEADED GULLS and 2 LESSER BLACK BACKED GULLS go over, as well as a pair of GREYLAG GEESE and a couple of single YELLOWHAMMERS fly over. SWIFTS went through in two's and three's and a SKYLARK was up singing.

The KESTREL family were being given a hard time by the local JACKDAWS at the Greenhouse Grounds, the boundary hedgerow of which had a WHITETHROAT, a CHIFFCHAFF and a singing BLACK CAP in it.

I was fooled into thinking the day was brightening up, when a few bits of blue sky appeared, but as soon as I picked the camera up and headed off to the lakes and Scrubby Woods the cloud came in, giving a few spots of rain!

I scanned the lakes on arrival, finding the immature MANDARIN DUCK on the main lake, with 7 CANADA GEESE and a GREY HERON, another Grey Heron was on the Small lake, but just a few MOORHENS were found on the ornamental lake.

The Scrubby Woods were quite lively this morning, with a large mixed feeding flock moving through the Oak trees, there were BLUE TITS, GREAT TITS, a couple of COAL TITS, NUTHATCH, TREECREEPERS, GOLDCRESTS, CHAFFINCH, Chiffchaff and Blackcap all feeding and chasing about the place, I estimate 50-60 birds in all, no Long Tailed Tits with them surprisingly though. A SPARROWHAWK flew over a little later, carrying its prey, no so surprising  :-)

I still haven't recorded Turtle Dove this month, I wonder if they failed to bred and have moved on?

Back to yesterday for the blog photo's, here's a few images of the Emerald Damselfly, the first time I have seen this species, what a beauty it is! Shame the light had mostly gone by the time we found them, not bad images though  :-) I'll show more photo's of Small Red, Four Spotted Chaser and Keeled Skimmer on later posts.