Every spring I dream of Osprey. Reports come in of birds moving north, often following the River Thames and ending up over Farmoor Reservoir or Port Meadow in Oxford. From the top of the public footpath that goes over the golf course next to the Lye Valley, there is a nice view to the west, over the Thames Valley and towards Boars Hill. I have often stood scanning from here, dreaming of how an Osprey would look as it drifted upstream. Small and very distant, was my conclusion. It is two kilometres to the Thames from here, would the bird even be identifiable?
Yesterday morning, with a report of an Osprey at Farmoor, I stopped at this spot, scanned the airspace over the Thames Valley again and dreamt of a Lye Valley Osprey. I had almost come to terms with the fact that an Osprey would never fly over the Lye Valley area. Why would it? Driven by a migratory urge to fly north, a bird following the river north towards Oxford would see the water of Farmoor or Port Meadow ahead of it and would seek out those potential feeding areas. For one to turn east and over the city seemed less likely. As I began my eighth year of local patch coverage, it had never happened and perhaps it never would.
Walking along the footpath by the Churchill Hospital at 8:25am this morning, having already recorded a flyover Great Cormorant and Grey Heron, I was reflecting on a decent morning for waterbirds, on a patch that has no open water. I looked up and noticed three raptors were flying over the hospital, at a relatively low height, perhaps 300 metres high. Immediately, one stood out. This bird had both very long, but also quite broad wings. It was flying directly away from me on flat wings and was silhouetted against an evenly grey sky, but in binoculars the depressed primaries, bulging secondaries and long square-ended tail told me all I needed to know. Very calmly, I said to myself “That’s an Osprey”, and immediately found the bird in my camera and began taking pictures. The bird banked, revealing pale underparts and an obvious dark chest band. It really was an Osprey.
The reality of what was happening only began to hit me as I continued to photograph the Osprey. I was watching a huge fish-eating raptor, on migration, over my urban local patch. The adrenaline wave hit, and gradually, I began to shake.
The Osprey gained height and began drifting to the north-east, straight towards Pete Roby’s house in Headington. Without taking my eyes off the bird, I called Pete and it was only when I heard the shaking of my own voice that I realised that I was going into shock. “There’s an Osprey heading your way”, I blurted, “it’s circling over the Churchill Hospital, but it must be visible from Headington!”
Having ruined Pete’s breakfast (he did not see the bird), I watched the bird return to gain more height over the hospital before it drifted away, but this time in a northerly direction, straight towards my house. I briefly considered calling my wife, to see if she could see it and add it to our garden list, but instead put the news out on the Oxfordshire WhatsApp group, noting that the Osprey was heading in the general direction of Otmoor. In total, I watched the birds for what felt like an eternity, although my camera data shows it was only about three minutes in total. The obvious dark breast band and dark carpal patches presumably make this a female Osprey.
Osprey joins an amazing list of bird species that I have seen (and photographed) flying over the Churchill Hospital. This includes waterbirds such as Great White Egret, Whooper Swan (twice), Bar-tailed Godwit and Oystercatcher, plus passerines including Crossbill and Tree Pipit and of course, this was also where the 2024 Yellow-browed Warbler was found.
Osprey takes the Lye Valley list to 113 species and is the first new species since Great Black-backed Gull on 2nd November 2024. Osprey moves the Lye Valley year list to an amazing 69 species and also completes my best March ever with (to date) 62 species (previous best March was 2021 with 58 species).