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:
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.
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.
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?
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.
It happens to everyone eventually. Birds are mobile and can move quickly between different areas. This means that they can turn up unexpectedly, which is one of the joys of looking out for them. It also means that they can frustrate, when they disappear as magically as they appeared. Sometimes, they just disappear, despite all your efforts. Last night was a horror show.
Most of the evening was extremely pleasant. Confirmation that there was a juvenile Purple Heron at Blenheim Palace arrived in the morning and I managed to negotiate a couple of free hours in the evening in order to try to see what is a rare bird in Oxfordshire. I arrived before 6pm and was pleased to find two friends, Dave Lowe and Wayne Paes, scanning the lake for the Purple Heron. Wayne had already seen the heron and had watched it fly away from the island, north over Queen’s Pool. All three of us were very confident that the heron would return to roost on the island in the lake before darkness fell.
The light was good, and as time passed, more and more herons and egrets began arriving to roost in the trees on the island. At 18:35 a flock of at least 15 Cattle Egrets flew in (from Otmoor perhaps?) joining a handful of Little Egrets on the island, whilst a Great White Egret fed in the shallows to the north of Queen’s Pool. Grey Herons stalked the shallows, making short flights between feeding areas. We discussed the incredible speed with which Cattle Egrets have become a breeding species in the county. Seeing all three egret species at one site is no longer the remarkable experience that it once was. As the climate warms up, the heat-loving herons and egrets of the Mediterranean find that they can now breed in Oxfordshire.
Gradually the light began to fade. Greenfinches and Starlings joined the heron roost. A Kingfisher zipped past, there was a distant Mandarin Duck, Pied and Grey Wagtails called from above, as they made their way to roost. But no Purple Heron.
By 19:30 it was virtually dark. Puzzled, we wondered if we had somehow missed the Purple Heron as it returned to the island. Or perhaps it had chosen to roost elsewhere? The moon rose behind the floodlit Palace, which was looking pretty special. I took the picture below and then we agreed to call it a day. It had been a pleasant evening, even without the Purple Heron making a reappearance. We parted, Dave and Wayne making their way towards the Palace, where they had parked. I began crossing the bridge to take the public footpath out of the grounds.
Then it happened. Less than two minutes after we separated, I heard shouting from behind me: “TOM, TOM, PURPLE HERON, PURPLE HERON!” I cursed, turned and sprinted back across the bridge. There was more shouting “PURPLE HERON, FLYING RIGHT!”. It was dark, I was running towards the sounds. It seemed to take an age for Dave and Wayne to come into view as I ran up the road towards the Palace, though it was probably less than 10 seconds. I was scanning the sky as I ran, but I could see no birds. Anything below the skyline was pitch black. The Purple Heron had just flown right in front of Dave and Wayne, in front of the stunning backdrop of the Palace and the moon, and had disappeared into the darkness of the Great Lake. I had missed it by less than two minutes.
The overwhelming emotion was frustration. Frustration that a couple of hours of effort could have ended with views of a moonlit Purple Heron flying by in front of Blenheim Palace. Frustration that sometimes in birding, the margins are very small. The choice of a view one way, or a path another way, and you miss the bird. But it happens. I know there will be other Purple Herons, the warming climate will see to that. It is not impossible that within my lifetime Purple Herons will be breeding in Oxfordshire, in the same way that Cattle Egrets have burst upon the scene this year. Still, to see one by moonlight, in front of the Palace… ouch.
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?
What are the chances of a good bird turning up in pretty much the only two hours that I have completely free in the entire month of August? That is exactly what happened at 09:41 this morning when Isaac West posted a message saying that he had found an Osprey at Farmoor.
This is a species that has always eluded me in Oxfordshire, so I make the snap decision to travel straight to Farmoor. I speak to Isaac, who tells me the Osprey has been circling the reservoir for the last 25 minutes and is still present. Aware that the bird could depart at any moment, I head straight for the door. Then I remember. I have a little free time this morning, but my wife has our car. Not to worry, I know that I can cycle to Farmoor in not much more than 20 minutes from Headington, albeit on a road bike, without optics and a camera. I throw these items into a pannier and head out on my commuter bike. Needless to say, there is a nasty headwind. I plough on, checking my phone in town and at the end of the Botley Road, as Isaac is under instructions to call me if the Osprey leaves the reservoir.
I sprint up the ramp to F2, leap from my bike and simultaneously scan the skies and call Isaac. There is good news: he has the Osprey in his ‘scope. The bad news is that it is currently about a mile west of the reservoir and flying away! Isaac gives me directions to the bird, but I only have binoculars and he doesn’t think the bird is a binocular object anymore. This is not good.
I tell him: “I’m going to cycle out to you on the causeway, keep it in your ‘scope!“, knowing full well that it is forbidden to cycle around the reservoir. Sure enough, in little more than two rotations of my pedals, I am stopped by some reservoir staff and told not to cycle. I dump the bike, pull out my optics and camera. I can see Isaac just over halfway along the causeway, watching the Osprey in his ‘scope. It is still distant, but flying away.
I have no choice. “I’m going to run along the causeway to you, keep it in your ‘scope!” With a DSLR camera and telephoto lens in one hand and my binoculars in the other, I start to sprint along the causeway. Whilst wearing cycling shoes. Chris Froome famously ran a section of Mount Ventoux in the Tour de France in cycling shoes. If he did it, so can I. And to my knowledge, Froome did not add a new species to his French list at the time either, whereas I have a full-fat county tick awaiting me, just along the causeway. Such behaviour did attract a few looks as I set off. Unbeknown to me, Bob Burgess and Steve Burch were observing me from across the reservoir, Bob commenting that there was a jogger with a lens on the causeway. Eventually, I get to Isaac and, to his credit, he is still on the very distant Osprey:
The bird is a dot in the sky! It is nearly in Faringdon. Fortunately for me, after wheeling back and forth for ten minutes or so, the Osprey begins to return to the reservoir:
Finally, I can make out some of the plumage details as the chocolate-and-white raptor heads back to F2:
And the bird performs magnificently, including a flyby over the causeway:
Superb! And massive thanks to Isaac for finding the bird and then keeping tabs on it whilst I completed my crazy triathlon. A county tick for us both, and there is also one painted on the exit sign at the reservoir:
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 GeeseBarnacle 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.
PeregrineHobby
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?
