Pittswood Birds

A chilly North wind blew this morning, but the suns strength was also felt when it occasionally showed.

I got round for a full patch walk today, when during the four hour trek, a total of 44 bird species were found, I didn't find the likes of Lesser Redpoll, Siskin or Pheasant, when they could of been expected, especially as the former two species were at my garden feeders this afternoon.

Nothing was added to the month or year lists, it was a generally average type visit, apart from the MUTE SWAN pair that are still present on the ornamental lake. I was pleased to see five species of Gull out on the pasture at Migrant Alley, BLACK HEADED, HERRING, LESSER BLACK BACKED, COMMON and best of all 2 MEDITERRANEAN GULLS, they were all flushed up from time to time for one reason or another, one of those being a low flying BUZZARD.

The KESTREL pair were seen chasing each other about around the Greenhouse Grounds and the FIELDFARE / REDWING / STARLING flock had scattered themselves around just about every available field, hard to count how many of each, but 200-300 birds in all i'd estimate.

All the expected woodland species turned out today - BLUE TIT, GREAT TIT, COAL TIT, LONG TAILED TIT, TREECREEPER, NUTHATCH, GOLDCREST, BULLFINCH, CHAFFINCH, GREENFINCH, GOLDFINCH, STOCK DOVE, JAY, GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER, GREEN WOODPECKER etc....

Just one noteworthy flyover was had today, that being a GREY HERON.

Later this afternoon I tried again to get some garden bird images to brighten the blog posts, but the light was intermittent, making photography difficult, here's what I captured though  :-)

Greenfinch

Long Tailed Tit

This WREN had just finished bathing  :-)

This Blue Tit thought about a bath, but decided not to!

The dozen or so LESSER REDPOLL are still stuffing themselves on the sunflower hearts

They see off the much bigger Greenfinches and Chaffinches