Pittswood Birds

Although not as foggy as yesterday, this morning was still very misty and overcast, with very poor visibility. The gloom cleared around 11:00hrs though and the sun came out for a while, too late for my patch walk unfortunately.

It was an uninspiring visit, with stretches of my walk being totally birdless, few species were found outside the core resident breeding species and not a single winter thrush was seen. The highlight of the walk was seeing two GREY WAGTAILS, one at the Greenhouse Grounds, plus one over at the lakes, which were home to just 7 MALLARDS and 4 MOORHENS.

The Kestrel wasn't seen today either, but the SISKINS and GOLDFINCHES at the Greenhouse Grounds had the SPARROWHAWK to contend with today, a much bigger threat and the flock dispersed pretty rapidly.

Flyovers from a few HERRING GULLS, BLACK HEADED GULLS, and GREYLAG GEESE were seen, plus single LESSER REDPOLL, 4 MEADOW PIPITS, 2 MISTLETHRUSHES, and a trickle of SKYLARKS also went over.

Of the woodland species, GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER, GREEN WOODPECKER, COAL TIT, LONG TAILED TIT, BULLFINCH, GOLDCREST, TREECREEPER and NUTHATCH were the best of the bunch  :-)

After some lunch, I decided to try and get some garden bird images at my feeders and new bird bath, but during my 2 hour stake out, I had very little opportunity to get any images due to the persistent Sparrowhawk attacks, it made 6 attacks in all, none of them successful. To make things worse it didn't even bother to land on the best perch for me to photograph it, how selfish of it  ;-) , I took a couple of images anyway, what a waste of an afternoon!

Sprawk 

Sprawk

Sprawk weaponry!