Pittswood Birds

There was a brief 20 minutes of sunshine this morning, then another 90 minutes late in the afternoon, but in between it was the same old dreary, gloomy drizzle  :-)

I spent a little over 4 hours out on my patch this morning, with a second shorter visit this afternoon, I carried out a full patch walk in which I gathered a total of 43 bird species, that's about average for a December day, but the likes of Pheasant, Fieldfare, Redwing and Treecreeper all went unrecorded, when I would of expected to find them.

I did add a species to the months list though, when 4 LESSER BLACK BACKED GULLS (61) flew over the Ashes Lane Fields heading South, this takes Decembers tally to the 8th best out of 14 recorded, lots of the month to go yet though  :-)

The best of the 43 species seen today were, for me, the two raptor species of KESTREL and SPARROWHAWK, plus the GREY WAGTAIL that is still hanging around the Greenhouse Grounds, where some other nice sightings were had, like the mixed finch flock of GOLDFINCH, GREENFINCH, CHAFFINCH, LESSER REDPOLL, SISKIN and LINNET, only one of the latter was present though and the Siskin and Redpolls seem to be diminishing by the day now. At least 4 YELLOWHAMMERS were in the small piece of rough ground between the Greenhouses and the Greenhouse Copse.

NUTHATCH, GOLDCREST, BULLFINCH, STOCK DOVE, GREAT SPOTTED and GREEN WOODPECKERS, plus MISTLETHRUSH, SONGTHRUSH and MEADOW PIPIT were all enjoyed as well today :-)

The female Kestrel was on the telephone lines during the sunny moment this morning

 

The light was just perfect for photography at that point  :-)

She was still around during my second visit, enjoying the later sunny spell, note the light change compared to the previous image :-)

This BLUE TIT was fresh from bathing and having a preen.