A much improved day, weatherwise, being quite warm this morning under a clear blue sky, it soon clouded over by midday however, just leaving the odd sunny spell to be enjoyed.

With most of the migrant species having arrived on my patch now and with not much chance of adding more species to the month or year lists, (unless something flies over) it's time to start looking for evidence of successful breeding, and for me that means finding recently fledged young. I spent some time in the wooded areas of my patch this morning, where I did find a couple of fledgling DUNNOCKS, ROBINS and BLACKBIRDS, but I was more excited to find a family of recently fledged TREECREEPERS, they were in a tight fist quite high up in an Oak tree, where I watched them for some while as the adults came in to feed them every few minutes. Unfortunately I only had my macro lens with me, but I took a few record shots for the blog.

Ive had to crop the images hard, but you can make out the 5 fledglings  :-)

One of the adults came in with food and the fledglings split up to fight over it

Oh for my 400mm lens! Here the adult Treecreeper brought in a large caterpillar, I even caught one of the young as it took off in this shot

Mind you if had not brought my macro lens I would not of got some nice shots of the Broad Bodied Chaser that was about ( i'll post those images on a later post) or the fantastic Downy ( or maybe Brilliant) Emerald Dragonfly that I found, either of these is a real scarce Odonata species for my patch (and elsewhere) so I was pleased to get stung, scratched and cut to get these shots :-)

My reason for thinking this may be the rarer Brilliant Emerald, is because of the Yellow mark you can see in front of the eye, this is situated in a 'u' shape around the the frons (face) which only the Brilliant Emerald has.

Ive sent some images to the British Dragonfly Society for their opinion

I really wanted a shot from the top angle, but as I moved to get one, the Dragon was off and I lost it in the trees  :-(

A bit later in the morning I walked over to my seat at Migrant Alley for a sky watch, hoping to add something to the May list, which at 64 is the joint 10th lowest of the previous 13 years. It proved a disappointing watch though, with just a few HERRING GULLS a LESSER BLACK BACKED GULL, a dozen SWIFTS and the 3 regular Raptor species of BUZZARD, SPARROWHAWK and KESTREL. The LITTLE OWL was also seen sitting on one of the Greenhouses, maybe it has young to feed and is forced to hunt in the day to find enough food?

Today I had a 3 hour patch visit from 06:30hrs, in some clear but cool conditions, by the end of the visit cloud had built up and the wind had increased, bring some light showers.

As yesterday, I found nothing new for the month or year birding lists and there was little to inspire me to stay out a bit longer. The best of what I saw today were.............Flyovers from GREY HERON, HERRING GULL, LESSER BLACK BACKED GULL and a few SWIFTS that had strayed over my patch from a much bigger gathering further south, where there seemed to 100+ moving westwards.

There were 3 GREYLAG and 5 CANADA GEESE on one of the paddocks at Migrant Alley, while the nearby Greenhouse Grounds had a LITTLE OWL perched on one of the greenhouses, the WHITETHROATS that have set up territory here, were much quieter than of late.

Crossing the Ashes Lane Field I saw another 2 Canada geese on the silage fields, where I was fed up to see that not only had the grass been sprayed with weed killer last week, but all the places where the tractor couldn't reach had been done as well, the little places that were left for the Butterflies and insects as well as nesting birds, were all wilting and shriveling up. I can see that my interest in my Pittswood patch will start to dwindle at this rate, after 14 years I may just call it a day at the 15th anniversary, we shall see :-(

I had a quick look around the Wet Woods, where I heard a TREECREEPER singing, then visited the Scrubby Woods, here I saw the first young STARLINGS of the year, as well as two recently fledged WOODPIGEONS, bringing the successfully bred list up to 13 so far.

I had a short sky watch back over at Migrant Alley for 40 minutes, seeing 3 BUZZARDS up hunting, sometimes hanging on the breeze, the male KESTREL made a better job of that! A SPARROWHAWK drifted over, nothing else of any note was seen though. The female KESTREL was on the Greenhouses as I walked home, first time I've seen her for a while, maybe she has young in the nest box now?

My plan was to go over to the Scrubby Woods later this afternoon, to look for Dragonflies and Butterflies, but it never warmed up enough and only short spells of sunshine were had, so I scrubbed that idea, instead I took some garden photo's of the birds that are visiting my feeders  :-)

The HOUSE SPARROW is a less frequent visitor now-a-days

This DUNNOCK flew in to take the House Sparrows perch 

A NUTHATCH has returned to take the Sunflower hearts, after a month away, it just came in once, very quickly, then went again with a bill full of seeds  :-)

A couple of JACKDAWS are raiding the suet blocks I put out for the Starlings, they are feeding young in next doors chimney pot.

 The local MAGPIE swoops in every few minutes, scaring everything away from the food, as far as he is concerned its his territory so it's his food, this will carry on until his young have fledged, then calm will resume at the feeders  :-)