I like to keep fit by running around interesting birding locations with my bins: I run and then if I hear or see anything interesting I stop for a look. I probably don't see everything that I would if I were to walk slowly and take it all in but on the other hand I get to cover a lot of ground quickly. I usually run around Port Meadow, that being my local patch but I like to add a bit of variety every now and then so I thought that I would take a run around Bagley Wood to see if I could locate any crossbills and to get some other woodland bird year ticks under my belt (not that I'm year listing of course!).
I arrived at around 11am, parked on the verge near the sawmill gate and headed off into the wood. I'd gone no more than a few yards when I heard the distincitve "jyp jyp" of a flock of crossbills flying overhead. I soon saw them and an quick rough count put the flock size at around forty birds. I headed further into the wood and at the main fork headed left where I soon heard some birds calling in the tree tops next to the path which turned out to be a flock of five siskins. Shortly after another ten siskins flew over. There was a goldcrest calling in the trees next to the path and after a little patience waiting it showed itself, a nice female bird. Down by the clearing there were no crossbills to be seen so I headed back to the main path and took the other fork over to the south east. A quick check of where I saw the woodcock in December proved fruitless and I made my way back, seeing a flock of coal tits working there way through the trees and hearing several more goldcrests and seeing a couple of muntjac deer. I decided to check out the clearing again but again had no luck so I was just starting to explore a new path when I heard several crossbills calling and saw them land in a tree top on the other side of the clearing. I decided to abandon my new path and went to have a closer look at what turned out to be a male and two females. By now time was marching on so I headed back to the car where I heard a calling nuthatch over by the sawmill.
Injured Gull Update I just thought that I'd mention the injured gull that I rescued a while ago. Apparently it's still alive though its not feeding itself (it has to be tube fed) and it won't stand on its feet at all, they're not sure why. I'll ring up again in a few days time to see how things have developed
I forgot to post this photo of some Curlew which were alongside the entrance track at Snettisham on my recent trip to Norfolk so I thought that I'd include it in this entry.
This black-tailed godwit on Port Meadow was a county year tick
A few more ticks for the various lists
Oxon Year List 2010 090 crossbill 15/02/2010 Bagley Wood 091 nuthatch 15/02/2010 Bagley Wood 092 blk-tld godwit 16/02/2010 Port Meadow
National Year List 2010 106 crossbill 15/02/2010 Bagley Wood 107 nuthatch 15/02/2010 Bagley Wood
As hinted at in my previous entry, I'd been planning a major excursion over to East Anglia for a while though the weather forecasts and a nasty cold had so far prevented me from going. My major excursions generally involve going further afield (usual staying overnight somewhere) and lining up a number of target birds that can be seen in reasonably close proximity in that area. A classic example was last year in Devon (spoonbill, cattle egret, surf scoter, cirl bunting and penduline tit). This trip all started as I'd been monitoring shore lark sightings and had seen a pair being reported at Snettisham on a regular basis. I then happened to notice that there was a good golden pheasant site not far from there (more on that later) and also that there were a pair of cranes and a rough-legged buzzard over-wintering in Cambridgeshire. I decided that all this was a sufficient number of target birds to warrant putting together a trip. Now any hardcore twitcher would just get up in the middle of the night to get to East Anglia by first light. However I find that I get too tired doing that and so instead I decided to travel over on the Sunday evening, stay in a hotel somewhere and then enjoy a full day's birding in the general area.
I'd been told that it might take somewhere between three and four hours to get over to Norfolk so in order not to arrive too late I set off at around five pm. Having planned the route carefully I had decided upon: from Oxford M40 north & A43 north to Northampton, A45 & A605 north to Peterborough then the A47 west to King's Lynn. I'd booked a hotel on the west side of the town on the ring road and conveniently close to my first birding location of the day. I found the traffic a bit busy as far as Northampton but after that it was fine and I was amazed to find that I got there in a shade under two hours and forty minutes. The hotel was functional though the radiators were so hot as to make it rather stuffy and it took a bit of time to get to sleep.
I'd decided not to bother checking the weather forecast, reasoning that if one did and tried to wait for a good day, with the weather as it was at present one would end up never going! I wanted to see the shore larks in particular before they moved location and was prepared to see them in any weather. Accordingly the next day I got up before first light to find a grey sky, a cold wind and intermittent sleet and snow falling. I was starting to wonder whether my forecast-denial was in fact a good idea after all but I had to make the best of it. My first port of call was a well-known location for golden pheasants. I have been told by a former local birder there who now birds in Oxford that this location had been so over-birded that the pheasants became very secretive and it had been very difficult to see the birds at all. He therefore asked that I kept it secret and I am respecting his wishes. Personally though, it seems a bit pointless as even I knew of this location as the one spot at which to see golden pheasants and I'd never even been birding in Norfolk until now. Anyway, I turned up at an area of woodland with plenty of dense rhododendron growth, apparently ideal for these elusive pheasants. I'd envisioned it as a quiet rural backwater but, getting there at around 7:30 just as it was getting light there seemed to be a steady steam of cars going by every few minutes. There are apparently two tactics that can be employed to see the birds: either curb crawl around peering into the undergrowth or to sit tight in a strategic location and wait for the birds to show. I chose to do a combination of the two: I sat and waited in the car until I got too cold or bored and then did a crawl around. Whilst waiting I did see a couple of squirrels, two muntjac and three roe deer all cross the road. In addition I heard and saw a number of geese flying over but not much else. I couldn't help but think that all the cars going by weren't helping at all and concluded that these must be people going to the nearby village to work on the estate there. Perhaps in hindsight coming a bit later would have been better and certainly after 9am it got quieter though with three other locations to go to my allotted time was running out. As I was leaving I met another car crawling along, clearly a fellow pheasant chaser. We had a brief chat and I'd mentioned that I'd not seen anything in an hour and a half and he said that he'd never seen the birds in twenty visits! This did make me feel a bit better about not having seen them but I couldn't help but think that he must be doing something wrong to have failed that many times! Anyway, onwards and upwards with the next stop being Snettisham.
I arrived to find just one car in the car park and I soon caught up with its occupants. With the snow falling steadily though never settling, we both agreed that we were surprised to find someone else as stupid as we were to be out in this weather. The shore larks had been seen the last couple of days right by the gate at the end of the chalet road, just where the path meets the beach so I started looking carefully as soon as I got there. There was a flock of a dozen or so finches but careful scrutiny revealed them to be linnets rather than twite. There was no sign of any larks in this key spot so I headed south towards the RSPB pools. I'm sure most people reading this will have already been to Snettisham but just in case there are any others like myself who'd not yet visited, the beach consists of a relatively narrow strip of shingle leading up to a ridge. Below the shingle is a vast array of mud at low tide, being the Ouse Washes which on the gloomy day I was there seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see. The other side of the ridge were a few pools overlooked by hides. I was interested primarily in the shore larks and therefore mainly concentrated on walking along the beach. At the first hide I took a break from the wind and sleet in the hide to have a scan over the mud flats. There were plenty of birds to be seen with good numbers of shelduck, redshank and dunlin interspersed with some curlew, oystercatchers, black and bar-tailed godwits and a few grey plover. I took the opportunity to take some digiscoped record shots.
Distant videograb record shot of a grey plover... ...and a bar-tailed godwit
On the pools there were loads of greylag geese with a single pink-footed goose in amongst them and plenty of the usual ducks that one might expect. Back out on the beach I walked all the way to the end where I was rewarded with the view of a peregrine flying low across the mud and along the narrow creeks trying to surprise something. As I was walking along I met up with the twenty-dips pheasant man again who said that he's walked the whole length of the beach without seeing the shore larks at all. As I came back to the turn off to the car park I reasoned that if the southern strip of the beach had been searched by two people without success perhaps it was worth looking further north in front of the chalets though the larks had not been reported there at all. As I started off in this direction I saw a few ringed plover and turnstone all quite close in and feeding on the mud. I had walked for a relatively short time in this direction when up ahead I saw something brown and lark-shaped flitting along the shore-line and a quick look in the bins soon confirmed them to be the two shore larks. They were working their way north ahead of me so I climbed the sea wall and, keeping well back so as not to spook them, walked ahead of them and set up my digiscoping gear. They gradually got nearer and seemed quite happy for me to take shots from on the top of the wall some twenty yards or so away. Unfortunately it was snowing quite heavily by now and my scope lens was a bit blurry and my hands were shaking from the cold but despite these things and the total lack of light, the birds were close enough for some shots to come out quite well.
The Snettisham shore larks
Some video footage of one of the larks Whilst I was looking at the larks a party of knot came quite close as well.
After a while I got too cold and started to head back to the car and as I did so the larks flew off ahead of me, back to their favourite location by the chalet gates. I was able to point them out to the couple I'd originally met on my arrival though twenty-dip man had by now gone (having dipped out on the larks too!). Back in the car I had a nice hot drink from my flask, nibbled on a sandwich and plotted my route to Cambrideshire. I'd been most pleased to have found the larks: to have dipped on both Norfolk target birds would have been rather depressing and with one success under my belt I could head off happy.
I'd lined up a couple of locations in Cambrideshire: Eldernell on the Nene Washes where a couple of cranes were over-wintering and the Coveney rough-legged buzzard. The journey there was uneventful, with some red-legged partridges in a field en route being a welcome year tick. Eldernell (park here) is somewhere that I discovered on the Cambirds news group. From the car park one has a view north over the Nene washes where wintering swans and geese can be seen. I arrived with the snow continuing to fall and visibility very poor. Unfortunately this poor visibility proved to be a realy problem at this location where one is looking out into the distance over the washes. I could make out good numbers of whoopers and Bewick's swans ahead of me and it was interesting to note the different size and jizz between the two species. Over to the east (where the cranes were usually seen) it was so gloomy that it was very hard to see anything. I did my best to peer into the dark and made out plenty of ducks, a heron and a white blob that could have been a little egret but no crane-shaped shadows could be determined.
I was starting to feel rather tired now as I headed off towards my final destination of Coveney for the rough-legged buzzard. Some road works meant that it took a little longer than expected and I arrived at the location at around 3pm. It was once again snowing/sleeting and I was thinking that any self-respecting buzzard would be holed-up somewhere sheltered but nevertheless I was going to give it my best shot though I'd been told on Cambirds that the buzzard could often prove difficult to track down so it was by no means an easy tick even at the best of times. Having been tracking the postings of sightings of this bird for a while I knew of the various locations that it had been seen and carefully scanned the trees and hedges from all possible angles and locations for about an hour but to no avail. In the end I had to call it as yet another dip and headed for home, negotiating the heavy rush-hour traffic along the A14 and once having to be thankful for ABS on the car when the line of traffic I was in suddenly slowed down as I was looking at a road-sign wondering which way to go.
So a score of one out of four on my target list which was somewhat disappointing. I realised part way through the day that I'd chosen some target birds which were all eminently dippable so I could have come away with nothing at all. I was pleased to have found the shore larks (which were lifers for me) under adverse weather conditions and I realise that this weather got the better of me for the Cambrideshire birds though I did arrive back home to read that someone else had seen the cranes at Eldernell that day, persumably earlier on in better visibility, which was rather annoying. Still, that's birding after all and a few lessons had been learnt along the way: for the pheasants it's not a good idea to try for them between 7:30 and 9am; it's a good idea to look at the weather forecast at least a little bit! and finally some birds are just hard to locate. I'd managed some good year ticks along the way and discovered some new parts of the country to bird to which I would definitely be returning. On balance a "Grand Day Out".
Not much to report of late. I had been intending to take another of my "Grand Day's Out" to Norfolk but first the weather forecast was for heavy rain (inaccurately as it turned out) and then I came down with a nasty cold so I've had to postpone that until next week. In the mean time things have been rather quiet. Last weekend I took L on my regular Saturday morning shopping trip via Dix Pit for a quick look around. There were plenty of wigeon, teal, shoveler and hundreds of coots, modest numbers of pochrd and tufted duck and hidden in amongst the submerged tree branches were six red-crested pochards, four drakes and two ducks. Not many gulls on the water but I could distantly see quite a few on the tip itself.
After finding the knot last week a few days later when the sun actually came out I went back to see if I could get some better photos. Fortunately they obliged and I was able to get a couple of good shots from across the river. Whilst I was there I met Jeremy Paxman, who I understand used to live in Oxford though he now lives somewhere outside the city itself. He was interested in my birding activities and asked me a few questions though he was rather ignorant on the subject himself and didn't even know a moorhen from a coot for example. He was happy to looking through my bins at the knot though and asked a few questions about lapwings and curlews. He also told me a story about Ken Clark, a keen birder, crawling around in the bushes looking at some LBJ only for his wife to point out that it was a sparrow.
All five knot posing for a group photo...
...and one of them on its own.
There have been a few drake smew sightings in the county and I've chased a couple up with not much success. Four drakes were seen on the Allen Pit at Dorchester at the start of the week so the next day I went down to take a look. Much of the pit was frozen over and all the birds were concentrated in the unfrozen southern end but despite careful scanning there were no smew to be seen. The day after I got a call from Jason Coppock to say that a pair of smew were on his local patch at Thrupp Lake at Radley. I had a few things to do at home but mid morning I went down for a look. Despite careful looking I couldn't see any smew but as I was leaving I drove along the north shore road, pulled in and looked from the car behind the islands on the lake. Sure enough there was the red-head but no sign of the drake. When I got back home I saw on Bird Guides that they had been reported as having flown off shortly before I set off so the red-head must have come back again.
Once I'd come down with my cold I didn't go out for a couple of days. In fact I think that all that standing around in the cold looking for smew was probably what gave it to me in the first place. However, after a couple of days I was getting twitchy to see what was about and when I heard a report of a ruddy shelduck that had been seen on Port Meadow the previous day I decided that cold or no cold I should get down there. There wasn't much to be found that day, with a couple of common shelduck being about the pick of the bunch but I did see a rather forlorn lesser black-backed gull on the far side of the floods sitting there half submerged with a few interested crows starting to gather round. I had half a mind to let nature take its course but something about the sorry state of the bird struck a chord with me so I went home and got my wellies and waded out to it. It's wings seemed ok but it didn't appear to be able to stand so perhaps both its legs were broken. Being in the cold water was obviously taking its toll and it didn't really put up any resistance when I picked it up.
The injured gull was incapable of moving and just sat there half submerged in the water I stuck it in this bag in order to take it home.
I brought the bird home and rang St. Tiggywinkles who said that they would be happy to take the bird. I have in the past taken injured birds to the local vets but I do wonder just how much care and attention they actually get whereas all the staff at St. T's seemed genuinely to care about the bird. I'm going to ring up in about a week to see what happened to it though to be honest I wouldn't be too surprised to hear that it had succumbed as it was in a bit of a sorry state. The bird was ringed so I reported it and was amazed to get a very prompt response - my last submission of a little egret last summer took weeks to get any sort of response back at all. The gull had been ringed at a landfill site in Gloucestershire just over two years ago and seen periodically within the same county ever since. This might have been its first foray into another county - something it'll not repeat again in a hurry if it lives to tell the tale.
Lesser Black-backed Gull - ring Blue CPK [Adult]
Ringed 15/12/07 SGD Stoke Orchard landfill site, Gloucestershire. 51.56N 02.06W Sighted 19/11/08 JDS Grundons landfill site, Gloucestershire (2 km, N, 340 days) Sighted 09/12/08 JDS Priding, Gloucestershire (26 km, SW, 360 days) Sighted 11/08/09 JDS Gloucester landfill site, Gloucestershire (16 km, SW, 1 yr 239days) Sighted 18/12/09 JDS Grundons landfill site, Gloucestershire (2 km, N, 2 yrs 3days) Injured 04/02/10 AH Port Meadow, Oxfordshire (60 km, ESE, 2 yrs 51days)
Just a few ticks to add to the year lists by way of record keeping. I hope next time to be able to report on my Grand Day Out to Norfolk - fingers crossed!
Oxon Year List 2010 087 red-crested pochard 30/01/2010 Dix Pit 088 shelduck 31/01/2010 Port Meadow 089 grey wagtail 03/02/2010 Radley
National Year List 2010 094 grey wagtail 03/02/2010 Radley
I forgot to post this photo of some Curlew which were alongside the entrance track at Snettisham on my recent trip to Norfolk so I thought that I'd include it in this entry.
This black-tailed godwit on Port Meadow was a county year tick
Distant videograb record shot of a grey plover...
...and a bar-tailed godwit
The Snettisham shore larks
Whilst I was looking at the larks a party of knot came quite close as well.
All five knot posing for a group photo...
...and one of them on its own.
The injured gull was incapable of moving and just sat there half submerged in the water
I stuck it in this bag in order to take it home.