Pittswood Birds

There was wall to wall blue sky and warm sunshine today, with just a light NE breeze, a real bonus day weatherwise!

Summer species are getting thin on the ground now, only 4 CHIFFCHAFFS were seen this morning, two at the Greenhouse Grounds and 2 over at the Scrubby Woods, where the only BLACKCAPS for the visit were seen, with 3 feeding on Elder berries. The only other summer birds seen on todays visit were a dozen SWALLOWS and two HOUSE MARTINS over the sheep pasture at Migrant Alley, plus a real goodie for the September list....a SWIFT (62), I don't often record Swifts in September, the median average last sighting date for them here is the 26 Aug.

SISKINS were again continually heard flying over, but not much else did, just a few HERRING GULLS and another MISTLETHRUSH. The three regular raptor species were all recorded again, those being KESTREL, SPARROWHAWK and BUZZARD, the latter were seen soaring somewhere over my patch every time I looked up!

Nothing of note on the lakes today apart from a GREY HERON.

In the warm conditions, I checked out the sunny edge of the Wet Woods for Dragonflies and found a nice female Southern Hawker, plus, at least 3 Common Darters and 2 Migrant Hawkers.

I filled my boots with images of the Southern Hawker, this may well be my last chance this year to do so!

I haven't got many images of female Southern Hawkers, so this filed a bit of a gap for my records  :-)

This male Migrant Hawker also posed nicely, but was in a windy spot, making sharp images harder to get.