Pittswood Birds

Heavy rain fell throughout most of the morning, but a short lived dry spell allowed me to make a circuit of Migrant Alley, before more rain curtailed the hour long walk.

It was disappointing not to be able to give my patch a thorough going over, as it was the last day of the month I was hoping to add just one more species to the August list, but the weather won again. I did however have the pleasing find of another WHEATEAR at Migrant Alley, they always set the pulse racing for me  :-) Unfortunately my circuit of the fields and paddocks revealed little else, just flyovers from SPARROWHAWK, HERRING GULL and BLACK HEADED GULL were noteworthy . I checked the Hedgrow that borders the Greenhouse Grounds and found a CHIFFCHAFF and 2 WHITETHROATS, but that was as good as it got this morning, in the very dark and dismal conditions.

Looking back at my stats and comparing this August to the previous thirteen, they show this August had the fourth highest bird species total of 74, four species behind the record tally, set in 2010 and again last year, it was also one species behind the 2011 total, which at 75 is the average tally for the previous five years. So this month wasn't too bad, considering I had Coot and Mute Swan on last years record haul, as they bred on the lakes. Species that could have been added this month, that have occurred in 7 or more previous Augusts, were: Turtle Dove, Sedge Warbler, and Reed Warbler, the latter two have yet to be recorded this year!

Three species were recorded this August that didn't feature in any other, they were Osprey, Little Grebe and Red Legged Partridge, these took the combined 14 year August list to 101, the Osprey and Little Grebe were also additions to the year list taking it to 98, but this is still 11 short of my hoped for year total of 109, which is the average for the period 2010 - 2014. However, with 4 months still to go of 2015, that may still yet be achieved  :-)

Obviously nothing for the camera in the dire weather conditions this morning. So todays blog brighteners are from the visit to Sevenoaks Wildfowl Reserve I made on Saturday.

Grey Wagtail

The sun went in for the last few shots, but they came out ok