Pittswood Birds

A mostly cloudy, but warm and windless morning made for a better full patch walk than yesterday.

A few more species were winkled out today, a decent tally of 46 in all, the WHITETHROATS had returned to the Greenhouse Grounds, where just one KESTREL was also seen, as well as a SONGTHRUSH, that posed for the camera. Once again there were no Linnets today, they have had a poor breeding season here this year.

Songthrush

  

A LITTLE OWL was seen perched up at the Small Holding as I made my way to the the lakes, Which had a bit more to offer today, with 7 CANADA GEESE, 1 GREYLAG GOOSE, 4 MALLARD, 4 MOORHEN, and a female MANDARIN DUCK. The adjacent Scrubby Woods had TREECREEPER, NUTHATCH, GOLDCREST, BULLFINCH, BLACKCAP, CHIFFCHAFF, GREAT SPOTTED and GREEN WOODPECKERS and STOCK DOVE present, as well as plenty of BLUE TITS, GREAT TITS, GOLDFINCH, CHAFFINCH, DUNNOCK, WREN, ROBIN, and BLACKBIRD, much busier than yesterday, but again no Coal Tit or Long Tailed Tit were recorded. Whilst there, I saw this Southern Hawker alight in the nettles, but I only had my 400mm lens on the camera, so had to stand 3.5 meters away and do my best! I was surprised at the results though.

Female Southern Hawker

I made a second visit to Migrant Alley, but as on my earlier, morning visit here, little was found, yesterdays star bird, the Whinchat, had moved on, but a skywatch provided flyovers from CORMORANT, GREY HERON, HOUSE MARTIN, SPARROWHAWK, and the three Gull species of LESSER BLACK BACKED, HERRING, and BLACK HEADED GULL.

The sighting of the day though came on my third visit to Migrant Alley, I arrived at 13:30hrs, where once again the pasture and paddocks were ''chat'' free, so i set about sky watching, within minutes I was watching 3 BUZZARDS soaring low over the fields, but higher up I caught sight of another large raptor, an OSPREY (97, 66) no less!!  Wow, what great patch bird! OK, I know I have recorded them in each of the last 5 years, but it's all about being in the right place at the right time, so it's always a thrill for me when I connect with one as it passes over  :-)  All my previous Osprey sightings have been in September, this is the first ever for August and it takes the 14 year combined August total to 100, how very apt!  :-)

Osprey! fantastic! It was too high for a decent photo, but good enough for a positive ID

It stayed high over my position for some minutes, allowing me to change the camera settings, but the images got no better, it was far too high