Pittswood Birds

Clear blue skies this morning slowly filled with cloud by mid day, leaving the odd bright spell in a cool North wind.

I got round for a full patch walk today, during which the five and a half hour visit produced 49 bird species, just the omission of Long Tailed Tit of the regular species prevented the fifty being reached!

Nothing new was added to my monthly tally, which languishes in joint 10th place out of the 15 Mays recorded, the same tally as in 2006, when visits were far shorter and fewer. I didn't add any new species to the patch breeding list either!

I did see the the LITTLE OWL at the Small Holding though, always a treat to see, plus the 3 local Raptor species of KESTREL, SPARROWHAWK and BUZZARD which were seen up hunting. A flight of 3 HOUSE MRTINS that flew over were just the second record this month, the only other summer species seen were the CHIFFCHAFF, BLACKCAP, WHITETHROAT, SWIFT and SWALLOW.

Flyover HERRING GULL and LESSER BLACK BACKED GULL added to the days list as did the continued presence of 30+ GREYLAG GEESE and 2 CANADA GEESE that were on the paddocks at Migrant Alley. A SKYLARK has been singing over the Ashes Lane Fields for a couple of weeks now, I do hope they don't breed there, but it looks likely that they are, unfortunately the field will no doubt be cut in the next week or so, as have the other silage fields :-(

I spent late morning at the scrubby Woods, once again looking for Odonata species and was well chuffed with finding 2 male Downy Emeralds patrolling the same sunny glade, however despite hanging around for over an hour, I failed to get a photo of one, in fact I didn't get a single photo of any of the Dragons today, despite seeing Beautiful Demoiselles, Azure Damselfly and White-legged Damselfly, but that's how it goes some days!