Category: Lye Valley LNR, Oxford

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!

A Christmas Jack Snipe

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!

Happy Christmas to everyone!

Jack frost and the cold spell

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 ponds
Common Snipe in the culvert at the very top of the valley
Isaac 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.

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.

More Oxford Tree Pipits

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!

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?

Tree Pipit on the patch!

Recording the first Tree Pipit for the Lye Valley area in August 2020 was a special moment. Not least as I put in a fair few hours in the autumn of 2019 without success. This year I had failed to see or hear any Tree Pipits in the last week of August, so when a loud “tzeep” call rang out from the sky on 4th September, I was pleased to record Tree Pipit for the second successive year. That Tree Pipit flew south over the golf course, I heard it call three times as it continued its migration across the county:

For most of today’s patch visit, things had not looked particularly productive. There was little evidence of many new migrants in, a juvenile Ring-necked Parakeet practicing flying low over the golf course greens was the slightly surreal highlight.

As I crossed through Churchill Meadow, right behind the hospital, I flushed a bird from the main track. It was immediately interesting. It flew fast, low and silently to the back of the meadow, but I got enough on it to feel confident that the bird was a pipit. There is virtually no overlap in existing records of when Meadow Pipit and Tree Pipits appear over the Lye Valley, but both could be potentially recorded in early September.

I went back into the meadow and walked through it twice without seeing the bird again. As I returned along the track, once again the pipit rose up, this time flying to a small patch of silver birches on the edge of the meadow. Here I could just glimpse it through the foliage:

I could make out the fine steaks on the flanks and then it began pumping its tail up and down: it was a Tree Pipit! Finally, it turned towards me for a moment, before flying back to the far edge of the meadow:

An unexpectedly brilliant view of a Tree Pipit! I suspect that Tree Pipits pass through the Lye Valley in tiny numbers every autumn, it is just a question of whether anyone is out there to see or hear them. The next target: a nice spring record of this species?

The Lye Valley & Warneford Meadow: Spring 2021

This is a summary of the birds (and some other wildlife) recorded in the Lye Valley and Warneford Meadow area between 20th March and 20th May 2021. There was a brief warm spell in late March, just before Easter, which saw the arrival of a few summer migrants. Then temperatures fell away, resulting in weeks of cold weather, including a remarkable mid-April snowfall. Nationally, spring 2021 was very cold and then very wet! April 2021 had the highest number of days with air-frost ever and was the third coldest on record. May 2021 looks like being the wettest on record. Neither of these factors are beneficial to migrant or breeding birds.

In this 61 day period, there were a combined total of 89 visits recorded on eBird to the Lye Valley and Warneford Meadow area. 59 species were recorded in March; 61 in April and 53 in May. By 20th May, 73 species in total had been recorded this year. 40 or more species were recorded on four days: 20th March; 9th April; 17th April and 1st May.

Sub-zero mornings became a routine, with dawn visits beginning by crunching through heavy frost, well into May:

Female Green Woodpecker in the frost.

In the freezing temperatures, some bird species would sit facing the rising sun to gather what warmth they could:

Male Sparrowhawk

Later in the spring, the local pair of Sparrowhawks would begin displaying:

Early spring sees waterbirds on the move and occasionally such birds would pass over the Lye Valley:

Greylag Geese
Barnacle Geese

However, most waterbird migration is nocturnal. Isaac West and I spent a few nights in late March listening and recording nocturnal migrants. See this post for details of a spectacular night, on 23rd March, when we heard migrating Common Scoter, Coot and Wigeon, as well as recording the first Barn Owl for the area.

Back in daylight hours, despite the temperatures, nesting behaviour could still be seen:

Red Kite with nesting material.
Singing male Grey Wagtail.
Singing Chiffchaff.

The rarity highlight of the spring occurred on 10th April when a Ring Ouzel flew over myself and Phil Barnett in Warneford Meadow. A few hours later a male Ring Ouzel was located in Marston Meadows in Oxford, perhaps the same bird? Ben Sheldon has been regularly visiting Aston’s Eyot, by the River Thames just off the Iffley Road, some one mile to the west of the Lye Valley area. Eight days after the Ring Ouzel flyover, I received the sort of text message that sends the inland local patch birder into cardiac arrest:

We can forgive Ben his typo. I know what seeing Bar-tailed Godwit migrating over your patch does to your adrenaline levels. It is incredible that Bar-tailed Godwit have been recorded flying over Oxford city in two successive years. I ran up to the nearest point with a view of the sky and scanned desperately, but to no avail. Ben followed this with reports of Marsh Harrier and singing Redshank overhead, neither of which materialised over the Lye Valley either!

The cold weather took a dramtic turn on 12th April with a heavy fall of snow, documented here:

Fortunately, despite several centimeters of snow, it had melted by lunchtime. The surreal sight and sound of a Willow Warbler singing in the snow was remarkable:

Once the snow was gone, spring behaviour returned. I have noticed Jays flocking together in large groups in April in a number of years now:

There were also drumming woodpeckers and displaying Treecreepers, whilst Siskins and Lesser Redpolls remained into late-April this year, much later than usual:

Treecreeper

This spring was a good month for falcons, with three records of Peregrine and two records of Hobby, as well as the local breeding pair of Kestrels.

Peregrine
Hobby

By mid-April first young birds were appearing. These Tawny Owlets were exceptionally early and would huddled together for warmth on cold mornings:

Very young Moorhens, on the tiny Churchilll Hospital balancing pond

The local Pheasants provided regular entertainment, displaying from mounds on Southfield Golf Course, before literally pulling chunks of feathers from each other

When seen, Muntjack Deer usually freeze, then run. This male, choose a different approach, by attempting to hide in low vegetation, just off the main path in the Lye Valley. I walked past and noticed the glowing white horns. I took a few pictures, then moved away:

In many ways, this was a spring of hunkering down in first cold, and then very wet, conditions. The second Sedge Warbler for the area was found singing on 27th April. A Kingfisher was seen twice on Boundary Brook, on 1st and 6th May, the latter sighting by myself and Dave Lowe, as he carried out his biannual Breeding Bird Survey for the BTO. This Kingfisher was the 99th species of bird recorded in the Lye Valley area on eBird. The full illustrated list of birds seen in Lye Valley and Warnford Meadow can be found here. What, and when, will be species number 100?

An April Snowstorm

On Monday 12th April I awoke to astonishing scenes. Not only had there been a significant overnight snowfall, but intensely heavy snow was still falling. I staggered out to Warneford Meadow to begin my daily pre-dawn search for migrant birds, but could hardly see across the meadow for the snow:

The view across the trees of the Lye Valley, towards the Wood Farm towerblock, from the golfcourse. This is April!

I was in a state of shock. The conditions were more like the Cairngorms (though with less crampons, see here). Needless to say, bird activity was severely reduced by the heavy snow. Indeed, the only bird of note was a fly-over Grey Heron, nicely illuminated from below by light reflected from the fallen snow:

I wondered what effect such heavy snow would have on the blossom of the many trees, just in bloom?

And how would the insectivore bird species possibly find anything to eat in such alien conditions? My questions were answered as I approach a pair of silver birch trees at the south end of the golf course. Incredibly, both trees were alive with phylloscopus warblers, feeding in the snow-covered branches:

I came to a conservative total of at least 8 Chiffchaffs, but the trees were filled with constant movements. Some of the Chiffchaffs had snow frozen to their feet as they moved through the trees:

But best of all were 2 Willow Warblers, both singing frequently. To stand in heavy snow, at times a near white-out, and listen to the liquid, descending notes of summer left me almost unable to reconcile what I could see, with what I could hear, my senses conflicted.

A Willow Warbler, feeding and singing, in heavy snow.

By 7:30am the snow had stopped falling. With the temperature just above freezing, the melt began. I was lucky to glimpse one of the local Tawny Owls, left absolutely bedraggled by the snowstorm:

Other birds appeared completely untouched by the snow. This Eurasian Jay perched for a moment on a branch above the stream, absolutely pristine in pink, blue and black. The colours were back.

By late morning, after taking my daughters’ sledging, the sun was out and most of the snow was gone, as though it was never there at all. The bushes were filled with singing Blackcaps and Chiffchaffs and there were insects in the tree blossoms. The early morning white-out was a monochrome memory.

Sky-listening: scooters and scoters in Oxford

Common Scoters are sea ducks. Their winters are spent off the UK and Irish west coasts, they migrate to Scandinavia and Russia to breed in arctic pools in the permanent daylight of the northern summer. As such, they spend most of their lives well away from land-locked Oxfordshire. Small numbers of Common Scoters appear in Oxfordshire in spring, mid-summer and autumn (see here for a few more details). The majority of records come from the county’s largest waterbody, Farmoor Reservoir, as birds drop in during their migration.  Common Scoter migrate at night and are perfectly camouflaged. The males are sooty black, the females dark brown. They will not be seen at night. Fortunately, they have evolved to make frequent and distinctive flight calls to each other. It is these calls that betray their presence in the night sky. And until up to 2019 that was the story of Common Scoters in the Oxfordshire. Then came the global covid pandemic.

Common Scoters, Bolt Tail, Devon, August 2020

By late March 2020, hundreds of birders were forced to be at home in the first national coronavirus lockdown. As news broke that a significant nocturnal movement of Common Scoter was occurring across northern England, lockdowned birders across the rest of the country began listening out for the flight calls of Common Scoters. Something was happening. It became apparent that Common Scoters not only used the Wirral-Humber flyway in northern England, but also the Severn-Thames flyway across southern England, and in fact, were being reported right across southern England as they migrated east overland (see here).

As early spring 2021 came around, Isaac West and I discussed the possibility of trying to hear Common Scoters on nocturnal migration from our local patch of the Lye Valley and Warneford Meadow in Headington, Oxford. This area, comprising of a local nature reserve, a meadow and a golf course has no open water and until 8th March 2021 over 368 patch visits had only produced one species of duck: Mallard. The 8th March saw a flock of 7 Goosander flyover, a completely unexpected new species for the area and a remarkable record. Even so, trying to add a species of sea duck to this list seemed like complete madness. But the first covid spring of 2020 had taught us something: the skies are alive with the sound of scoters. Sometimes.

This week we spent three evenings, socially distanced, on Southfield Golf Course listening to the sky. Isaac prefers the expression “live noc-mig”, but I like “sky-listening”. Like “sea-watching”, it captures what you actually spend most of your time doing. Almost immediately I heard the sound of Wigeon passing overhead. A satisfying start and duck number three for the Lye Valley area! Shortly afterward, we heard the sound of a very loud scooter revving up and driving through east Oxford. But above it, the flight call of a Coot:

Scooter and Coot (at the 3-4 second mark). Nocturnal flight call, Southfield Golf Course, Oxford 23rd March 2021. Recording by Isaac West.

So we had scooter, but not scoter. The best moment of the evening was at 21:30 when the first Barn Owl for the area hissed at us:

The first 90-minute sky-listening session had produced three new species for the area. I was hooked. With little wind forecast for the next night, we tried again on Tuesday 23rd March. Very early on we both heard the pyu-pyu-pyu calls of a migrating Common Scoter flock. They were very distant, to the east, so distant in fact that Isaac’s recorder did not pick up the calls. Success, but we wanted proof. We wanted a recording. We tried again on Wednesday 24th March. It was desperately quiet, not even a Redwing called. By 21:30 we were both cold and about to give up, when the ringing calls of Common Scoter were heard again, this time from the west. The flock passed over, heading east, but was just loud enough to be audible on the recording:

Scooter and scoter were in the bag! You don’t need special equipment to hear these migrating flocks of sea ducks. Although distant, both the flocks we heard on the nights of 23rd and 24th March were quite clearly audible over the sounds of east Oxford. An overhead flock would be quite an experience.

Find a quiet spot on a still night, be familiar with the flight call (Teal and other duck species are also on the move at night and are also vocal) and be patient. We spent a total of 4.5 hours listening across three successive evenings to hear the two Common Scoter flocks pass over. Last year the major movement of Common Scoter across England occurred in the first week of April, so we may not be at peak scoter yet. The next few weeks provide a real opportunity to get Common Scoter, an arctic-breeding sea duck, on your Oxfordshire patch and garden lists. Incredible stuff.

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