Time pressure has made it hard to visit the patch as much as I would of wanted this week ,but the high light of the week has been the 1 or 2 Cuckoo s that have been calling on the patch this last week.
Saturday was a lovely morning and you got the feeling that the spring migration was over with young birds been seen fed by their parents around the patch.
Bird song is much less than it was only a few short weeks ago , birds now concentrate on breeding and raising young.
In the hedges I managed to find 2 Blackcap , 5 Chiffchaff and 7 Whitethroat , its been a really good year for the latter with some cracking ones been seen on the patch .
Overhead it was a better day for Swallows with 25 plus about, their numbers boosted by good numbers of juveniles ,6 plus House Martins kept them company .
On the pastures were 6 plus Skylark and a Red Legged Partridge . Just 2 Stock Dove put in an appearance today .
The best birds today were 2 Little Owls that called to each other ,they must be having trouble sleeping at the moment .
Some of the grass has been cut in the fields for silage and on the short grass it was nice to see a flock of 38 Starling , 35 were juveniles so they seem to be having a good breeding season locally.
For the raptor fans there were just 3 Buzzard today , but a female Kestrel was hunting on the patch today.
The thing about patch birding is you never know what may turn up and where ,so as I was about to go into the cottage I was alerted by a bird song that I had not heard around the cottage before , I scanned the trees and found my quarry a male Goldcrest singing , a bird that I have not seen on the patch in mid summer before, was this bird a late Spring or early Autumn migrant .Whatever it was ,it was a good bird to see at this time of year .
For my Bullfinch fan I failed to find any today ,they seem to have gone a bit quiet of late
