Category: Oxfordshire Birding

The Cowley Parakeet Roost

Whilst at work last week, I popped outside of the building to take some meter readings, only to find that there was a flock of 15 Ring-necked Parakeets in the tree at the back. A few local birders have suspected that the parakeet roost that held over 40 birds last winter in north Oxford, had moved into east Oxford. Ring-necked Parakeets seem like much more of an east Oxford kind of bird, so it felt appropriate to see them on this side of town. But where was the roost site?

I saw the flock of 15 birds fly over the building and leave to the east, but I lost sight of them behind the local houses. Intrigued, I kept an eye open at dusk on the following few evenings and discovered that a large flock of parakeets routinely gathered in an alder tree on Henley Avenue, visible from my workplace. There were a lot of birds. On December 12th, I counted at least 56 Ring-necked Parakeets in the top of the tree:

Birds arrived from about 15:30 in small groups and gradually worked their way up to the top of the tree, calling noisily. At 16:25, in near-darkness, the entire flock left and flew to roost in a couple of tall conifers in the back garden of a house on the corner of Florence Park Road, a short distance away. Both the pre-roost tree and the roosting trees are marked on this map:

I think this is the highest count of Ring-necked Parakeets in Oxfordshire to date. Birds have been breeding in the city for a few years and from the numbers present at this roost site, the local population is clearly doing well.

Despite being an introduced species, and one that may present some challenges for some native bird species, I always enjoy seeing and hearing parakeets. They are brightly-coloured and charismatic birds. The pictures below, taken in London, show the faint pink neckband on male birds that gives the species their other common name, Rose-ringed Parakeet. The tail is blue on the upper surface and yellow underneath and their grey-blue irises are also pretty cool:

August Highs

After the lull in migratory bird movement that is June and July – a period that I just about get through with gritted teeth – August brings more hope. The species that I target are Yellow Wagtail, Spotted Flycatcher and Tree Pipit. None are guaranteed in urban Oxford, but most years see one or two records of some of these species. Passerine migration kicked in early in the Lye Valley this year, with small numbers of juvenile Willow Warblers and the first Lesser Whitethroat of the year all being recorded in the first week of August. The first of the scarce August trio fell on 9th August, when a Yellow Wagtail flew over Warneford Meadow, calling loudly. There was then another quiet period, although large roving flocks of Tits, Chiffchaffs, Blackcaps and Willow Warblers kept up interest. Almost as soon as we entered the second half of August, I struck patch gold. A chunky-looking brown finch was flushed by a dog walker on Warneford Meadow. The movement and the call instantly attracted attention: a hard “tic, tic, tic“, a call like nothing else I had heard on the meadow in over 500 visits. Fortunately the bird perched for a few seconds on a distant oak:

A Corn Bunting! Almost as soon as I said the words, it took off and flew strongly south, over the golf course and away:

Although Corn Bunting now breed quite close to the city, records from within the ring road are exceptionally rare. There are no Oxford city records of Corn Bunting on the OOS database or on eBird. Asking around within the local birding community revealed that the last confirmed record of Corn Bunting in Oxford city was a breeding record in 1980, some 43 years ago! (Bayliss (1982) per Ben Sheldon). Ian Lewington commented that this looks like a juvenile bird, perhaps engaging post-breeding dispersal. Many thanks to Ian and Ben for their input.

My adrenaline levels had only just recovered, when two days later, on Saturday 19th August, I heard a loud clear flight call, the classic high-pitched, buzzy “tzeep“, from a migrating Tree Pipit. Looking up revealed two pipits flying south-west, not that high above trees of Warneford Meadow. I used to try to photograph flyover migrants, but in many ways a recording of the flight call is more definitive evidence of the identification. The challenge of recording Tree Pipits is that they go over quickly and don’t call constantly. As soon as I heard the first flight call, I hit record on my phone, but by the time the birds called again they were too distant for my phone to pick up the call clearly.

Nevertheless, I was stoked, the second of the August trio had fallen and this was the earliest Tree Pipit I have recorded here by two days, plus the first record of more than one bird. Overall, this is the seventh Tree Pipit record at this site over the last four years, some details of the other records are here. Now for Spotted Flycatcher to complete the set!

Night Heron

Great to see the satanic red eyes of an adult Night Heron in Oxfordshire today, especially as the first wild bird for the county in recent times was only identified from photographs on Otmoor this spring and was not seen by anyone else. This bird was found at the southern end of Peep O’Day Lane, near Abingdon, by Tom Wickens, this morning, and was a popular draw for local birders.

Good work, Tom Wickens!

Black-winged Stilt

Richard Rae has known Dave Lowe for a long time. Richard came down to visit Dave in Oxford on Saturday and, fortunately, said that he would like to try to see the Common Cranes on Otmoor. They duly came across a pair of Common Cranes on the reserve and then began to scan the area known as Big Otmoor for other birds.

That was when Richard exclaimed, “Am I going mad?“. Dave, immediately responded “Yes“. Dave has known Richard for a long time, he could confidently answer, without knowing any of the context of Richard’s rhetorical question. Richard followed up with “Is that a Stilt?“, whereupon Dave began taking Richard’s questions much more seriously. For there was indeed, a fabulous Black-winged Stilt, feeding on one of the pools close to the main bridleway:

The rain on Saturday afternoon seems to have brought this migrating bird down to feed in the wet pools and marshes of Otmoor, but it was keen to keep moving. After a short period of time, Dave and Richard watched the Black-winged Stilt depart, flying up into the cloud base, heading north. Perhaps the low cloud deterred it from continuing its journey, for fifteen minutes later it was back, on the same pool. Even better, I was just about to arrive on Otmoor. The Stilt then moved to feed further away, where the video below begins, before returning once again to its favourite pool, the final few scenes on the video, which are taken through quite a lot of reeds:

Richard “The Stilt” Rae (right) and Dave Lowe (centre) being photobombed by Wayne “Spotted Crake” Paes.

Stilts are not only unmistakable and beautiful birds, but are also very rare birds in Oxfordshire. Ian Lewington, the county recorder, passed on the fact that this was the fifth Oxfordshire record (and the eighth bird) after one at Shipton Quarry in June 1993; three at Radley in June 1993; one at Pit 60 in April 2012 and two there in May 2017. So, all in all, a quality find from team Lowe-Rae. Unfortunately, the Black-winged Stilt departed overnight and was not seen the following morning. This bird continues a remarkable run of rare birds on Otmoor this spring, following the long-staying Spotted Crake and the very brief Night Heron. A long-staying Purple Heron would be much appreciated next. It would help bury the trauma of the Blenheim Purple Heron.

Five chicks and seven eggs

This morning, a glorious still, warm morning under blue skies, saw me undertake the first of two annual bird surveys along the River Thame near Cuddesdon, my old patch. The first surprise was a pair of small dark duck flying towards me, one with a huge pale supercilium. Desperately hoping that these were Cuddesdon’s first Garganey, I got onto them in the binoculars only to discover that they were in fact a pair of Mandarin Duck. A good record, although this species has bred on the river here in the recent past.

The second major surprise was the first Cuddesdon record of Goosander, a female with five young were on the river. Goosander only began breeding in Oxfordshire in 2020, at nearby Waterstock. I contacted Nick Marriner and we compared notes. He had last seen the birds at Waterstock, a female with five young of about the same size, a few days ago. We agreed that it was more likely that these were the Waterstock birds relocating, rather than another breeding pair of Goosander in the county – but both hoped to be wrong about this! Here are the birds at Waterstock on 21st April:

There were good numbers of singing Reed Warblers in the margins of the river, lots of Whitethroat were back and singing, as was a single Lesser Whitethroat. There were no Kingfisher or Cuckoo on this visit, but I almost trod on this huge Mute Swan nest, temporarily unattended, although the pair quickly returned when they saw me, and I retreated quietly. Seven eggs!

My eBird list for this BTO Waterways Breeding Bird Survey, is here, https://ebird.org/checklist/S135900188

Spotted Crake

Wayne Paes was on the main bridleway at Otmoor, at dusk on Tuesday. The Otmoor soundscape is stunning in spring, with booming Bitterns, drumming Snipe, reeling Grasshopper Warblers and the loud calls of displaying Lapwing and Curlew. Wayne decided that he would try to record some of this atmosphere on his phone, thinking that he could use it to create an interesting and personal alarm tone. As he began recording, a loud, almost electronic, call rang out from the marsh in front of him: “whip – whip“. Wayne had just found a Spotted Crake. Then nothing for about 5 minutes, before the bird began calling, this time incessantly. It was indeed, a Spotted Crake.

For a long time I thought that I had seen Spotted Crake in Oxfordshire. I could recall a juvenile bird at a tiny reservoir one September, in the far north of the county, that fed on the shoreline in perfect autumn sunshine, even coming right out into the open on occasion:

However, when I entered all my sightings onto eBird a few years ago, this site, Wormleighton Reservoir, came up as being in Warwickshire. The very far northern tip of Oxfordshire meets Northamptonshire to the east and Warwickshire to the west. Turns out that Wormleighton Reservoir is about 500 meters west of the county line (Oxfordshire is in green on the map below):

This meant that I was especially grateful to Wayne for finding the Spotted Crake on Otmoor on Tuesday. At dusk on Wednesday, I made my way to the main bridleway on Otmoor and joined a great bunch of local birders: Wayne, Terry, Pete Roby, Ben Sheldon and Conor MacKenzie, amongst others. The previous day the Spotted Crake had begun calling at 20:47, although Ben Sheldon, ever-the-scientist, pointed out it that should start slightly later today, as there were two minutes more daylight than the day before. He was right. And the bird followed exactly the same pattern of singing as on Tuesday: two calls, as if to warm up, then five minutes of silence, before beginning calling constantly, once every second or so from 21:00:

Using only my phone, I recorded a few other night-singing species whilst we were admiring the sound of the singing Spotted Crake. Here is an audio-montage of Otmoor at dusk in late April, complete with Spotted Crake. It is a fabulous place:

Otmoor soundscape montage

Headington Whooper

Warneford Meadow, a warm, grey mid-November morning. One minute I’m wondering about the earliest singing Song Thrush I’ve heard by about four weeks. The next, I glance up, and there pure white against the evenly grey sky, is a flying swan:

Or as I put it at the time: “OMG, there’s a f******g swan!”

Mute Swan is a rare bird up here, where we have no open water. I’ve recorded more than twice as many Tree Pipits (5), as I have Mute Swans (2), in the last four years.

In these situations, I reach straight for my camera. The detail on flying birds it can pick up will be much greater than I will see, even with binoculars. I fired off a dozen or so pictures, then moved back to binoculars to watch the swan continue north-east, over the Churchill Hospital and away over Headington and out of sight. Was it the way the head and bill profile appeared long and smooth in the camera viewfinder that made a voice in my head say “that could be a Whooper?” Or maybe it was just the time of year? Either way, as I reached down to check the pictures on the back of my camera, I knew the identity of this bird was about to be resolved. I looked at my first picture of the bird and zoomed straight in on the head. It was a Whooper Swan!

It had the head profile of a ski-ramp, long and smooth, blending seamlessly into the forehead. Some yellow was just about visible on the bill. To me, the underside of the bill and the head appear pretty flat and in line with the underside of the neck in flying Mute Swans. Whereas in Whooper Swans the head bulges lower down, beneath the line of the neck in flight. This was very apparent in the field and in the pictures, above and below.

A Whooper Swan, over Headington – a record so unexpected, that it was not even on my fantasy list of potential new bird species! This is up there with the other great Lye Valley flyover records, Bar-tailed Godwit (April 2020) and Great White Egret (March 2022). These moments make local patch birding so rewarding. What next?!

The eBird list from today is here, a Woodcock flushed from Churchill Meadow was also notable.

Out of the darkness and into the light

Let’s start with the good news: I am going to survive this. The bad news is that I had a terrible bike accident two weeks ago. I crashed on a high-speed descent and sustained serious soft tissue injuries that required 9 days in hospital and two rounds of surgery, including a skin graft on my right thigh. I am eternally grateful to my cycling companions (Michelle, Andy Last and Ben Sheldon) for administering first aid in pretty traumatic circumstances whilst we waited for the ambulance to arrive. 

Once the surgeons at the John Radcliffe in Oxford had finished their work, there was a five-day wait to ensure that my skin graft had taken. The vacuum dressings could not be removed during this period, so this was a straight five-day wait in a hospital bed. 

As I was unable to move or get up, I was fortunate to have a bed next to a window. The days blurred into each other, I spent hours alternating between watching clouds and trying to nap to fight the crushing sleep deprivation of being in hospital, when you are woken every two hours to have your vital signs assessed. 

But if you can see the sky, then you can see birds. A routine began to emerge. I began keeping a daily e-bird list of the species that I could identify from my hospital bed. The hospital has a large Feral Pigeon population, these and the local Woodpigeons were the commonest species, along with Red Kites and Crows. Twice a Grey Heron flew slowly overhead, and once a Little Egret passed right over my side of the building, black legs and yellow feet, trailing behind it.  It gave me pleasure. I smiled. 

I was allowed to keep my window open, so sometimes could hear bird calls. Dawn is very early in June, but not as early as the nurses and their medication rounds. I heard Blackbirds singing, Wrens calling and Swifts screaming. One morning, at about 4:30am, I heard a singing Chiffchaff in the dawn. I was transported back to happier times, hearing this species announcing that spring was here. These connections with the outside world, and between my past and my present were incredibly therapeutic. When you are trapped in a hospital bed, anything that takes you to another place or time is very precious. 

The staff and surgeons in the hospital were fantastic and I am expected to make a full recovery, though my leg may never quite look the same. To every person who visited me in hospital – thank you, it means more to me than you will ever know.

So, here I sit, in my garden on a hot summer’s evening, with Dave Lowe. My leg is in a brace, I’m forbidden from bending it for two weeks, but can walk with crutches. Above us, some form of aerial insect hatching event is taking place, There are several hundred gulls circling above Headington, flycatching. Swifts join them, as does the occasional opportunistic Red Kite. I scan through the gulls, beautifully lit against a blue sky. As always, most are Lesser Black-backs, with a few Herring and Black-headed Gulls in with them. Then I find myself checking for Mediterranean Gull, dreaming of Yellow-legged Gull. I smile. It’s going to be OK. 

Great White over Headington

For a district that is 67 miles from the nearest sea, it seems strange that Headington is associated with sharks. But Bill Heine’s fabulous fiberglass shark, which protrudes 25 feet above the roof of the house he owned in New High Street, is probably the most famous thing about Headington. It also looks pretty good at night too, here pictured with Comet Neowise in the summer of 2020:

I had my own Great White experience in Headington yesterday morning. It was a routine Saturday morning dawn visit to Warneford Meadow and the Lye Valley. Perhaps early spring, if I really squinted hard enough, but really it was late winter. March 5th is slightly too early for the mass of waterbird migration that should kick off from mid-month and will probably pass overhead elsewhere, but as with all local patch birding, you just never know. So I keep going, just in case. A singing Nuthatch and drumming Great Spotted Woodpecker were positive signs many bird species were entering their breeding cycles. Displaying Greenfinches were obvious too, and Chaffinches had recently started singing.

I watch the skies constantly, as nervous as Vitalstatistix, who lived in fear of them falling on his head. My anxiety was not over the impending collapse of the atmosphere, but of missing a migrating bird flying over. Or worse: of only seeing it when it was already too distant to identify. The vast majority of my scans of the sky reveal either nothing or just Woodpigeons. But if you do something enough, eventually something will happen. Or at least, that is what I tell myself.

At 7:23am, I notice a shape in the sky. High above the Churchill Hospital, flying away and slightly east, it has deeply bowed wings and is quite large. I furrow my brow and raise my binoculars, whilst the words “Grey Heron?” begin to form in my mind. The data from my eyes immediately answer this question in the negative – the bird is pure white, above and below. “F**k, it’s an egret” I mutter, whilst quickly swinging my camera around to capture some pictures. Whilst the motor part of my brain works away on the logistics of getting some pictures of a distant white bird flying away from me against a white sky, the inquisitive part of my brain is still wrestling with the identity of this bird, from what I can see through the viewfinder, whilst I take pictures. “Looks big, very deep wingbeats – got to be a Great White?!” I ask myself, without really taking on the meaning of this.

By now, the bird is distant. My camera is not going to help me much more. I put the camera back on my shoulder and go back to a binocular view. The bird is struggling a bit with the stronger gusts of wind and drops down slightly in front of Shotover Hill, before rising again and continuing its journey east. A local Red Kite provides a nice point of comparison as they pass near each other, both birds appearing a similar size in flight.

Finally, I can hardly see the egret anymore, so I turn and review the pictures on the back of my camera. It IS a Great White Egret! The long, dark legs, trailing behind the body are just visible, as are the deeply bowed wing on downbeats:

You can just about make out the yellow bill here and check out the length of those wings:

Wow, what a start to spring 2022, or what an end to winter 2021-22! Either way, this is an amazing record of Great White Egret over Headington, Oxford, and a great incentive to continue dedicated coverage with spring migration just around the corner. What else might fly over before the sky falls on my head?

Pallas’s Warbler

On one hand, it was expected. But on the other, completely unexpected. Pallas’s Warblers are very rare inland. But, very occasionally, a Pallas’s Warbler will spend the winter in the UK. I can recall a bird in the south-west that stayed and even began singing in early spring. One even wintered as close as Berkshire in 2013, but this was an exceptional record. Realistically, Pallas’s Warblers are rare birds of the east coast in late autumn. They are a great find anywhere being tiny, beautiful birds and all birders love them. There has never been a Pallas’s Warbler in Oxfordshire, and quite feasibly, there may never be one. Until Gareth Blockley found one yesterday afternoon.

At 15:48 the county rang to the sound of expletives as Gareth broke the news of his astonishing find:

We can forgive Gareth for his mis-spelling of the bird’s name. The magnitude of the find and the myth of the Pallas’s Warbler is such, that lesser men than Gareth would have been rendered unconscious at that moment. Gareth found and identified the bird and got the news out, with diagnostic pictures. These are the acts of legend in Oxfordshire birding.

Unfortunately, within 40 minutes of the bird being found, it was dark. Only two other people saw the first Oxfordshire Pallas’s Warbler that day. There then followed a contender for the most tense evening ever in Oxfordshire birding history. Would the bird stay? Would anyone else see it? Would it survive a night several degrees below zero, indeed the coldest night of the entire winter?

Well before sunrise, in bitterly cold conditions, local birders began gathering in the line of trees where the bird was last seen. By sunrise nearly 40 people were present and we pretty much all knew each other.

Bird activity began. It went something like this: Blue Tit. Chiffchaff. Long-tailed Tit. Chiffchaff. Chiffchaff. There were a lot of Chiffchaffs. Blue Tit. Chiffchaff. Chiffchaff. And so it goes. A freezing hour passed. Another freezing hour passed. The procession of Chiffchaffs continued.

Then, finally, a shout from Pete Roby. Running. Looking. More running. And in the back of an alder tree, a yellow and gold gem zips about manically: the Pallas’s Warbler. The bird is very mobile. In binoculars I get a flash of the rump as it powers up into the crown of the tree, followed by views of the head pattern as it pauses, before darting across the track to feed high in alders further along the path.

Photographs are pretty much impossible, though I do try. It is dark, the bird tiny, hyperactive and silhouetted.

Pallas’s Warblers are so breathtakingly beautiful, that every trip to see one is built on dreams of images like this:

Where the reality is so often, much more like this!

But we didn’t care. We had seen an Oxfordshire Pallas’s Warbler and that is very, very special.

The author would like to thank his support group for their help in writing this article without using the phrase “seven-striped-sprite”. Thank you.

error: Content is protected !!