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.
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:
Celebrations back on @RiverThameCT with Goosander back successfully breeding at Waterstock Local Wildlife Site. 3rd year in a row 🍾🍾👏👏 pic.twitter.com/24sfKmNu4F
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!
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:
My youngest daughter suggested making the theme of this year’s Christmas cake the fabulous Jack Snipe that graced the Lye Valley earlier this month. After a bit of experimentation with modeling clay and spaghetti (not natural companions of the usual Christmas cake), we came up with this!
As is so often the way in the modern world, it began with a phone message. The current spell of freezing weather has been tough for birds, with some species fleeing the worst of the snow in southeast England by moving west. All standing water has now been frozen for over a week, forcing wading birds to seek out flowing water to find unfrozen mud. Such conditions can force some birds into the city waterways too. I was out early on Saturday and Sunday mornings and by Monday morning had added the third Mute Swan and the first Golden Plovers for the Lye Valley area, as they flew overhead:
I was at work on Tuesday, when Tony Gillie messaged me, with some staggering news:
It was not just that this would be a remarkable species to see within Oxford city, but also that the photo was taken on a phone. The bird must have been standing next to the observer! I contacted Isaac West and we agreed to go and see if we could find the Jack Snipe at first light the following morning, Wednesday. Suddenly Sunday felt a very long time ago.
We arrived at the top pond at the head of the valley, in bitterly cold temperatures. Immediately we could see a number of Common Snipe rising from the small pools at the top of the valley, circling around and descending again. With these birds being so mobile, it was hard to put a number on them. A conservative count was four, but there could easily have been twice this number present. For context, there is only one other Lye Valley record of Common Snipe, a single bird from January of this year.
Common Snipe in vegetation in the Lye Valley pondsCommon Snipe in the culvert at the very top of the valleyIsaac checks the top pond. It really is this small.
We took a few steps closer, another snipe rose, I raised my binoculars, saw the short bill and the long dark crescent under the eye and I called “that’s it!” as the bird landed a short way down the valley. As we got onto the boardwalk some snipe flew back towards the ponds, so we returned to the top pond. We scanned the pond edges and Isaac called “I think I’ve got it!” There, amongst the frozen vegetation was a tiny, but magnificent, Jack Snipe:
The upperparts were very dark brown, making the long strong scapular stripes glow golden-yellow in the pre-dawn light. A passing Wren gives some impression of how small these birds are:
As the rising sun began to touch the top of the bird’s head, we noticed that there was frost on the wingtips and tail of this bird, literal Jack frost:
I put the news out to the local group and we were joined by a few other people, including Pete Roby:
The first ever Lye Valley twitch. Crowd control was not necessary.
Jason turned up, was greeted by sunshine and managed to get some superb video, as the Jack Snipe de-frosted and began to feed:
Even better, this Jack Snipe was the 100th species that I have recorded in the Lye Valley area and I could not have hoped for a better species for this landmark. It also takes the site list to 103 species, the illustrated checklist of all these species can be seen here. The Lye Valley bird list now contains seven species of wader, remarkable for an area with no significant open water. The cold spell is forecast to end today, Saturday, and a visit this morning produced more waders. Not one, but two Woodcocks:
This two-week period of freezing weather may have been tough for the birds, but has produced some incredible local patch birding.
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.
A half-term family break to a friend’s house at Fife Ness. We drove up on Thursday 20th October, a filthy day. A deep low was situated just off the coast of Northumberland, pulling in strong winds from right across the North Sea onto the Fife coastline. Visibility was poor, the coast was battered by strong winds and rain. All the way up I was wide-eyed in anticipation. Twisting, invisible corridors of air began to connect Fife with birds migrating across northern Europe. Some of these birds may have come from Scandinavia. Some from much further afield. But all of these birds were suddenly pulled across the North Sea and in terrible conditions, sought the first land and cover they could find.
We arrived at Fife Ness on Thursday evening, I spent the last 30 minutes of light at The Patch, a small area of trees on the tip of the peninsular. Late October, rain on my face, an easterly wind in the sycamores. It does not get better. A Yellow-browed Warbler calls. The atmosphere crackles with anticipation.
The tiny wood is stuffed full of Goldcrests. Their constant high-pitched calls provide the backdrop. The sound of the easterly wind in the sycamores, the constant call of Goldcrests and behind them all, the distinctive dry rattle of a calling Red-breasted Flycatcher:
Red-breasted Flycatcher
Robins were everywhere, thrushes streamed overhead, Redwing calls a constant aerial soundtrack.
My most wanted was a self-found Pallas’s Warbler. The sycamores held Blackcaps (above), Chiffchaffs and a Lesser Whitethroat that was eventually ringed and proved to be a Siberian bird, blythi. Brambling and Redpolls passed overhead all day, Woodcocks zipped around. It was superb. Later in the afternoon I caught up with a dark shape at nearby Upper Kilminning, flitting away from the Robins, a Red-flanked Bluetail, always keeping under cover, always hiding the blue in the tail:
Birds were being found all around the peninsular. A Barred Warbler at Lower Kilminning, Yellow-browed Warblers at a number of sites. The nearby Isle of May produced a spectacular haul of 2 Bluetails, Pallas’s Warbler, Radde’s Warbler and tens of Long and Short-eared Owls. Over the next day, the easterlies faded, leaving behind them some extraordinary birds. The best, this Amur Stonechatstejnegeri which breeds no nearer than Mongolia.
The unstreaked orange rump, the dark brown mantle, contrasting with pale underparts and the pure white throat were all features I saw on the stejnegers at Westing on Unst in October 2019, but no doubt DNA analysis will have the last say on this bird’s identity.
Bird migration calmed down from intense high of the first few days. But even on calm days migration was apparent, these Pink-footed Geese from the Arctic, heading down the coast, over the forest:
I also visited the Hilton of all seawatching hides, the Fife Bird Club hide at the tip of Fife Ness. Having joined the club to gain access to the hide I was not disappointed: comfy office chairs on wheels (with back cushions too!); padded benches; a working and correct clock; lots of information boards, it was impressive! The sea watching was gentle, I did some simply because I live a long way from the sea. Gannets and Razorbills streamed past, Common Scoters flew past in small flocks, with a few Velvet Scoter and Long-tailed Duck past now and then too. Good numbers of Red-throated Divers were frequent, with singles of Manx Shearwater and Puffin being the highlights, alongside a small pod of Bottle-nosed Dolphins.
Velvet ScoterBottle-nosed Dolphins
The rest of the week saw some other nice moments. A beech tree reaching down to a small stream, its leaves cradling a rock surrounded by water. On the rock, under an umbrella of leaves, a Dipper, singing away above the sound of the stream:
We visited Tentsmuir Forest, Red Squirrels were hard to come by this year, but we glimpsed a few:
Dune Waxcap
The self-found Pallas’s Warbler may have to wait for another autumn. But the combination of those easterly winds, the sycamores on the coast, migrant birds everywhere with anticipation levels peaking, made for an amazing, intense and very special east coast migration experience.
Partial solar eclipse, peaking through the clouds.
The shift in our birding fortunes began, very subtly and almost unnoticed, on Saturday afternoon. We were at Valyie, where Andy was mourning the departure of three juvenile Common Rosefinch, one of his favourite birds. I guess it takes all sorts. And we had seen all three birds on more than one occasion already.
Juvenile Common Rosefinch, “in all its glory” – photo by Andy.
At about 4pm, Andy called me to say that he had just had a glimpse of the head of an unstreaked acro in the dense bushes behind the house. I joined him and we spent half an hour or so searching for it, but hardly saw a bird. Then news broke that the Ortolan was back on the beach road, so we walked down to try to see it and made a mental note to return to Valyie. The next afternoon we were back. Dusk was falling. I was walking slowly down the gully next to the house, when I flushed what appeared to be a pale, almost sandy-coloured, warbler. It flew further down the gully, and appeared very evenly coloured, with no warm rump tones. I called Andy, who joined me and after a few minutes, the bird flew from the gully, into the crop field across the road. We had one more flight view that evening, in near darkness, but could not add any detail to what we had already seen in two brief flight views.
We were back at 8am the following morning, Monday 3rd October. We were joined by local birder and Unst resident Dave Cooper and a friend. After half an hour or so of searching, Andy located the warbler in the crop. It was extremely elusive, only flicking up occasionally and never perching out. It was also very mobile, appearing in one area and then popping up at the other end of the field for a second, before disappearing. Early on, Andy had a very brief glimpse of the whole bird which suggested Booted Warbler. Later in the morning, we had another flight view, which revealed the short-winged appearance, slightly jinking flight action and no definitely no white in the tail. So we now knew it was not a Booted Warbler and our thoughts moved towards Blyth’s Reed Warbler. As the weather deteriorated, with rain showers sweeping through, the bird appeared less pale, more a light rufous brown. Feeding in soaking vegetation was also making the bird wet, which added to the darker colouration we saw as the day wore on. After five hours, this was my best picture of the warbler:
Not much to go on!
But we did not let it go. You can feel it when the Birding Gods are testing you. We tried to remain alert and observant, even when the bird disappeared, even when it rained. Fortunately, a few more people joined us as we tried to confirm the identification. Roger Wyatt, from Oxfordshire, and another birder called Scott, had brought thermal imagers. These proved invaluable in helping locate the bird in the crop by narrowing the search zone, which made getting photographs slightly easier, though the bird remained extremely elusive and mobile.
Far right: Andy, next to Roger Wyatt using a thermal imager to locate the Blyth’s Reed Warbler in the back of the crop field
From pictures taken by Roger and Dave, the consensus was that we had found a Blyth’s Reed Warbler. The undertail coverts and flanks appeared clean white, with none of the buff tones of the undertail of Reed Warbler or the flanks of Marsh Warbler. It was noticeably short-winged, even in flight and some images showed a supercilium that bulged in front of the eye but did continue to extend back behind the eye. Dave Cooper has posted some of his pictures here and was happy with the identification, having found his first Blyth’s Reed in the very same field. On that occasion, it took him seven hours to identify it, in similar circumstances. It took us about eight hours in total. Being only an hour behind Dave Cooper, made us feel pretty good!
Back of camera shot from Roger WyattBack of camera shot from Dave Cooper. Note the short primaries, white undertail coverts and bulging fore-supercilium
On Saturday what was presumably the same bird appeared in Dave Cooper’s garden, which is only a twenty-second flight from the Valyie crop field and is visible from it. Here all the requisite features can be seen: clean white undertail coverts and flanks; short primary projection; an obvious fore-supercilium (not the open-faced appearance of Reed with an obvious eye-ring) and a dark “smudge” on the tip of the lower mandible. We did not hear this bird call.
Blyth’s Reed Warbler – photo by Dave CooperWing detail – photo by Dave Cooper, my text. Blyth’s Reed has deep emargination on p3 and p4, Reed and Marsh only on p3.
So having taken eight hours over three days to unravel our first rare find on Shetland, it took us about two seconds to wrap up our second. We left Unst on Tuesday morning and began our drive down through Mainland to catch the evening ferry from Lerwick. We had time to pop in to admire some other birds en route, so headed to Hillswick to see the reported Pechora Pipit. As we headed out to the west side of Mainland, Andy spotted two glowing white shapes perched in the lee of a bush, sheltering from the driving rain and westerly gale. They were very obviously, and immediately, identified as Hornemann’s Arctic Redpolls. It was not a difficult call. The only difficulty was looking at them directly, as the nearly pure white rump and flanks were burningly bright, threatening our retinas:
“Look at the white on that!” Hornemann’s Arctic Snowball. Going FULL SNOWBALL!
It had been a good twenty-four hours. For the first time, we felt calm and rewarded for our efforts. It was a bit odd to meet other birders at Hillswick, having met so few people on Unst, but we tried to be sociable. We had reasonable flight views of the Pechora Pipit and both got binocular views of the black and white mantle braces. If you squint very hard you can make out the dark wing panel, bordered by white wingbars above and below, on the montage picture below:
Like monks, Pechora Pipits are known for their silence on rising. We heard the flight call twice, a hard, almost electronic “dzitt!“, that was very distinctive. Also like monks, we nodded in silent appreciation:
The possible homeyeri Great Grey Shrike – picture by Roger Wyatt
Half an hour later we were watching the Great Grey Shrike in the village that some are speculating may be of the eastern race homeyeri (pictured above), when the Birding Gods finally delivered their special reward. It was whispered there was a Lanceolated Warbler at Wester Quarff, some 45 minutes south of us, but close to Lerwick and our evening ferry. Presumably whispered, because we could not quite believe this was true. What were the chances that two major Shetland specialities would both be on Mainland and pretty much on our route to our ferry on the only day we were travelling south? We gave thanks to The Gods and left immediately. Our suffering was being rewarded.
Seeing the Lanceolated Warbler was not easy. It had attracted a crowd, perhaps 120 people when we arrived, including the friendly faces of Ewan Urquhart and Jim Hutchins from Oxfordshire. The bird was feeding in a field next to the road, where there were cows and calves. The grass was quite long and viewing was difficult. I got lucky and happened to have a clear view when the Lanceolated Warbler crept out from behind this tussock. However, most people were unsighted and could not see it. This tiny warbler had the behaviour and colour of a mouse, weaving its way through the grass stems:
Hugh Harrop then took control of the situation, asked the farmer the move the cows away from that corner of the field and arranged for three people to walk slowly through the field so the bird could be walked across the road to the opposite field, where the vegetation was shorter and the light better. This worked well, the Lanceolated Warbler fluttering across the road, passing between Ewan Urquhart’s legs at one point. Once across the road, it continued weaving its way through the grass, occasionally coming out into the open, where I had the sort of views of Lanceolated Warbler that I had only dreamt about. It was a fabulous bird:
We felt elated and relieved. Finally, we had seen some of the Shetland specialities that we have long dreamed about seeing. Two Arctic Redpoll, a Pechora Pipit and a Lanceolated Warbler: it had been a good day by anyone’s standards. But of course, the Birding Gods are fickle beasts. They delivered a Myrtle Warbler to Mainland the next day. Having driven north away from Oxfordshire and an American nightjar, we now found ourselves driving south, away from Shetland and an American warbler. We could sense the Birding Gods smiling. But we did not mind, as so were we.
The eBird trip report for all the birds we saw, photographed and sound recorded is here.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be birds,” and there were birds. But only the few would see them. And to do this, they had to pay the price.
The Birding Gods are fickle beasts. They give with one hand and take with the other. Having been deprived of a trip to worship the birds of Uganda with Dave Lowe and Ian Reid by a serious bike accident in June, I reasoned I had suffered enough. The Gods thought otherwise. I spent the summer recovering, walking, then cycling again. A planned trip to spend a week on Unst with Andy Last had looked in jeopardy, but I worked hard on my recovery and by late September, felt physically capable enough to commit to travel. This year, we would not base ourselves on Mainland Shetland, but rather headed north, to spend the week on Unst, home of the most northerly house, post office and lighthouse in the UK. We would be closer to the Gods. We would concentrate on finding our own birds. The Birding Gods would be pleased.
We left Oxford at 6am on Monday 26th September. A day I’ll always remember. Cause that was the day my belief in the benevolence of the Birding Gods died. By lunchtime, we were just south of Glasgow. We pulled into a service station. I glimpsed a thumbnail of a picture message from Jason arrive on my phone. I said to Andy “I think there’s a Nightjar in Oxfordshire“. Then, immediately, this:
The shock that rippled through the Oxfordshire birding community also rippled through us, in Scotland. But, unlike the other seventy people on that group whose lives at that very point in time had been thrown into chaos and who were desperately planning how they could escape work, family, or indeed any other sort of commitment at all, we were very calm. We were calm because we immediately knew we would not see this bird. It was six hours back to Oxford and we had a ferry to catch to Shetland that evening from Aberdeen. There was no decision to make. HAD I NOT SUFFERED ENOUGH? Obviously not, it was quite simply the best bird ever to turn up in Oxfordshire. A North American nightjar: better than the Oriole. Better than the Scops Owl. Better than the Surf Scoter. Much better than the Buff-bellied Pipit. It did not take long for our calm to turn into pain. We drove on. We suffered. We were well past Stirling before we spoke again. Andy turned to me and said, “Is it still there?” I checked and nodded, “Showing beautifully in the sunshine“. We birded the Girdleness peninsular, next to the Aberdeen ferry terminal, and found a Little Gull. At precisely the moment the Nighthawk took off from its fence in Wantage to continue its migration, our ferry pulled away from the docks in Aberdeen, into the teeth of a fierce north-westerly gale. It was going to be a rough night. Clearly, I had not suffered enough.
The next morning, our arrival in Lerwick was delayed by a couple of hours by the headwinds, so we had the chance to look for seabirds from the ship as dawn broke. In amongst the Fulmars, Gannets and occasional Bonxie, we found 5 Sooty Shearwaters shearing their way south through the North Sea. We docked in Lerwick, caught up with the Glaucous Gull in the harbour and the drake Surf Scoter at nearby Gulberwick, before we headed north to our home for the week, the most northerly island of Unst.
Glaucous Gull, Lerwick Harbour
We were based for the week in Uyeasound, right by the harbour and right by the Otters. We checked the local area every morning for migrants, before birding north through the island.
Uyeasound, on the south coast of Unst
Shetland in autumn is the land of Yellow-browed Warbler. They were out in force again this year, after a quiet year last year:
Some birds were quite vocal and we heard calling birds most days:
Most places had Common Redpolls too, calling fly-over birds were frequent:
But one of the highlights of this autumn was the influx of the big beasts from the north, Hornemann’s Arctic Redpolls. The birding machine that is Geoff Wyatt, found one just outside Uyeasound one afternoon when Andy and I were up in the north of the island, which we caught up with later in the week. We slipped off the island once, just to Mid Yell about 30 minutes away, to marvel at this fabulous white beast, before vowing that we must find our own:
At the ferry port this Minke Whale surfaced close by, the sound of its blow ringing around the bay, drawing attention:
Common migrants were a little thin on the ground, but sites with cover usually held something. We found Redstarts, Lesser Whitethroats and a Garden Warbler in various places, plus…
Spotted Flycatcher
Brambling
Meadow Pipit
Snow Bunting
Fulmar
Whooper Swans
Occasionally we popped in to pay homage to a local scarcity:
BluethroatBarred Warbler – photo by AndyRed-backed Shrike – photo by AndyOrtolan
We enjoyed an hour at Burrafirth, pictured above, one afternoon, with fog and clouds rolling in from Hermaness. We both thought we heard a Yellow-browed Warbler call from the bracken on the hillside. A quick clamber up revealed there was one, and a Willow Warbler and in the valley a Whinchat. Hermaness had no migrants, but still had good numbers of Great Skuas, we had 12 together at one point.
Andy at HermanessMe
But we sensed something had to change. We were finding birds, but just not the right ones. Andy’s camera stopped working after four days. I took this as a good sign. Is there a better way to get a close, beautifully lit view of a good bird, than not to have a working camera at hand? We couldn’t think of one. Another day passed. We considered whether we should take this strategy a step further and submerge all our optics in the Pool of Sacred Tears (aka the small garden pool by the road out of Uyesound):
This thought process paid immediate dividends, with Andy getting a glimpse of a small dark crake running between the willow bushes in the background. It was nearly dark before it ran back, confirming its identity as a Water Rail. We flushed this bird from near this area as we walked back along the road the following morning too.
We went back to the Gods for advice. Andy re-created the moment that the mighty sea-birder Erik the Red scored the first Fea’s Petrel for the North Sea in AD65, from this longship near Haroldswick. But the Gods were not amused. I slipped on the deck of this boat and twisted my injured leg. Had we suffered enough? Had we paid the price? Would we get our reward? Find out next time in “Shetland 22: the end”.
This morning’s visit to the parched Southfield Golf Course/Lye Valley area produced a couple of classic late-August migrants.
First up was a vocal Yellow Wagtail. Yellow Wagtails are recorded annually as fly-over migrants, but I am not aware of one ever being seen on the ground here. That all changed this morning when one flew over calling and as I watched, it dropped out of the sky to land on the golf course and begin interacting with 2 Pied Wagtails:
This bird called frequently. I recorded the flight calls using video on my phone and then downloaded them:
As I was watching the Yellow Wagtail on the ground, a loud, buzzing “tzeep” call from low overhead told me that my day had just gotten significantly better: the second Tree Pipit of the autumn was passing over. I just managed to capture a single flight call, as it headed south:
The regular appearance of Tree Pipits around Southfield Golf Course in Oxford city in late August and early September is still a puzzle. Historically, Tree Pipit is a scarce migrant and occasional rare breeding bird in Oxfordshire, although Tree Pipits were recorded regularly on this urban hilltop golf course as long ago as thirty years ago (per Steve Heath). I failed to see or hear any in 2019, but Tree Pipits have been recorded in each of the three years since, with all records between August 24th and September 8th.
Not all of these records are fly-over migrants. Last year I found a silent, feeding bird in the small meadow behind the Churchill Hospital (see photo below) and in 2020 one was heard calling at dawn from hawthorn scrub on the golf course. Dave Lowe has suggested that migrant Tree Pipits may roost in scrub and trees on the golf course and are being picked up at first light as they leave to continue their migration. Whatever the attraction of Southfield Golf Course to Tree Pipits, their annual appearance is one of the highlights of the early autumn migration period. Tzeep!
