Last Friday I was just gearing up for the start of the working day when news broke from the north of the county up at Grimsbury Reservoir that a Red-rumped Swallow had been found. There have only been three previous records of this national rarity with the last one being at Farmoor in May 2012 which I managed to see, so it wasn't going to be a county tick. Still it was only 30 minutes away and with only a modest amount of walking at the other end it seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up so I threw on some clothes, fired up the Gnome Mobile and headed northwards. Despite the heavy traffic coming into Oxford, going out was fine and so it was that almost exactly 30 minutes later I was pulling up at the reservoir. Given the very overcast conditions with rain threatening at any moment I wasn't too worried about the bird moving on: this was perfect weather for keeping it in one place. A quick text enquiry ascertained that the west side of the reservoir was the side to be on and I yomped off to find a small group of twitchers right at the far end so I hurried to join them. As soon as I arrived JT put me on the bird which was hawking low over the water in overcast conditions. I watched it for a few minutes before losing sight of it.
A short while later JD messaged to say that he was watching it down at the other end of the reservoir so I hurried back to that end (thank heavens Grimsbury is such a small reservoir compared to Farmoor!) to find that it was coming regularly to sit on the railings of the small pontoon that jutted out into the water, offering sitting views of no more than 25 yards or so. I waited patiently and a short time later it did indeed return. I was able to get some great shots of it with both my superzoom and my digiscoping gear.
Yours truly waiting for the return of the star bird, courtesy of Justin Taylor
You couldn't really ask for better views of a Red-rumped Swallow - so often it's just distant in-flight views that one gets so this was something special and more than made up for the nasty dip of this same species that I'd had in Cornwall earlier in the year.
After a while as the weather lifted it moved off and restarted
feeding over the reservoir. Having had such great views of this gem of a
bird I felt that there wasn't any need to hang around and I headed back home, a most contented bunny. As I write this some five days later, the bird is still around, so it's turning into a bit of a long stayer. Who knows I may even go for seconds!
Last year as part of my on-going quest to see all the UK orchid species I'd fully intended to pay a visit down to the south coast to see the Early Spider Orchids. However with their flowering in April and the fact that as usual we went to Cornwall during the Easter holiday, in the end I never managed it. So this year I vowed to make a special effort to get down there though in the end it wasn't until the last day of April that I finally made the trip. I opted for Durlston Country Park, a spot where I knew they were present and which I'd previously visited to see my last UK butterfly species, namely the Lulworth Skipper a few years back. The two and a half hour journey down from Oxford was uneventful though a road closure meant that I had to detour closer to Bournemouth than I'd originally planned but I arrived at around 1 pm to find conditions sunny and warm. I quickly yomped down to the steep slopes where I'd seen the Lulworths before, thinking that this would be where the orchids were also located but alas there was not an orchid to be seen.
Durlston Lighthouse
I therefore had to slog my way all the way back up the very steep slope
and to head to the visitor centre to ask where they were to be found. It
turned out that they were all in one field at the back of the Education Centre instead so I headed back towards where I'd parked the car and then on to the track behind the Centre. In the third field past the Centre I started coming across orchids - I was at last in the right spot! It turned out to be a large grassy meadow with quite close cropped grass with clusters of orchids dotted about in various places. The Early Spiders were mostly to the north and east sides whereas the other two species (Early Purples and Green-winged) were dotted all over the field.
As it was getting rather late in the season many of the ESO had already gone over but I still found enough specimens still in full bloom to be worthy of a photograph.
Early Spider Orchids
I wandered about for a fair while, enjoying the EPO and GWO as well.
Early Purple Orchids
Green-winged Orchids
After I'd had my fill I wandered down to the cliffs to look at he Auks that were nesting on the cliffs. There was a fair collection of them bobbing about on the sea as well as a few that were visible at the base of the cliffs.
Shag, Razorbill & Guillemots at the base of the cliffs
Auks on the sea
My first Wall Brown of the season
Then I headed back to the visitor centre for a quick cup of tea and some cake before heading back to the Gnome Mobile and set the coordinates for home. Unfortunately due to a problem with my charging cable my phone soon ran out of battery and without the aid of my Sat Nav app I ended up going around the outskirts of Bournemouth in the rush hour so it took much longer to get back than it should have done. Still I arrived safely back at Casa Gnome in time for another cup of tea and a catch-up with the family. It had been an enjoyable first orchid sortie of the season.
With birding, there are certain cans of worms that are generally left unopened until one is forced to. One such can is the whole Yellow Wagtail complex with the various subspecies which all look bewilderingly similar. I have to 'fess up right now that in a fit of enthusiasm quite a few years ago I bought the Helm "Pipits and Wagtails" book but since then I've not really used it at all, chiefly because I've not really had any cause to. This all changed in the last couple of weeks when a couple of interesting subspecies turned up in Oxfordshire which finally forced me to at least start to get to grips with it all. So largely for my own education, but also in case it's of interest to readers, below I've laid out a summary of the complex. Please note, I've missed out a few of the minor subspecies in this in order to make it simpler:
Main Points for Adult Male Yellow Wagtail Complex
British Yellow Wagail (M.f. flavissima)
Here in the UK
Yellow head, supercilium, yellow throat
------- the blue headed variations -----
Blue-headed Wagtail (M. f. flava)
West Europe and west Russia
Blue/grey head, supercilium, yellow throat
Syke's Yellow Wagtail (M. f. beema)
Kazakhstan, & SW Siberia
Blue/grey head, supercilium, yellow throat, white lower cheek area
Eastern Yellow Wagtail (M. tshutschensis) - now a full species
Central and south eastern Siberia
Blue/grey head, supercilium, yellow throat, ID'd on call or DNA
Spanish Wagtail (M.f. iberiae)
Iberia and NW Africa
Blue/grey head, supercilium, white throat
------- the grey/black headed variations -----
Black-headed Wagtail (M. f. feldegg)
South east Europe and Asia Black head, no supercilium, yellow throat
Grey-headed Wagtail (M. f. thunbergi)
North Europe and North Siberia
Grey head, no supercilium, yellow throat
Ashy-headed Wagtail (M.f. cinereocapilla)
Italy, Sicily & Sardinia
Grey head, no supercilium (or just a hint), white throat
In terms of how they're identified it's all down to subtle things to do with the combination of the supercilium, the head colour and the throat colour. I've picked out the key points in the table in order to make sense of it all. Of course the females are all much harder to ID - don't even go there!
So the first of the two interesting birds was one found by RW late one afternoon at Farmoor. Looking almost monochrome in terms of colouring, this first winter bird immediately had us all hoping for Eastern YW which as a separate species would be a tickable Mega for Oxon. Apparently it's possible for more western bids to look like this as well in certain circumstances so to claim EYW requires either DNA evidence (so poo or a feather) or at least a recording of the call
First winter Yellow Wagtail species, perhaps M. f. beema (Syke's Yellow Wagtail), courtesy of Roger Wyatt
Our esteemed county recorder IL pointed out that this bird has pale cheek coverts below the eye which isn't a normal characteristic of EYW and is a feature which is diagnostically generally only shown by M .f. beema (Syke's YW). Sadly, the bird was only seen one other time by one other observer a few days later and despite a last gasp twitch to try and see it myself on the second occasion, it was nowhere to be seen. Thus it has to remain unidentified to sub-species (or even species) level though it did prompt much debate amongst Oxon's birding community.
Fast forward to the first day of May and post afternoon tea, I decided that I needed to get out of the house to stretch my legs so decided to wander down to the Meadow. There I met TM, who, as a young student birder has become more obsessed about birding Port Meadow than even I was when I first started (and that is saying something!). Sadly the years of patch birding has taken their toll on me and I'm not as keen as I used to be but TM has taken up the baton with gusto and visits far more often than I do. As I strolled up to Burgess Field gate I spotted him hunched over his scope, though as there were no flood waters left any more (they were dried up in the recent spell of hot weather) I couldn't help but wonder what he might be looking at. As soon as I arrived he excitedly told me that he had a dark headed male Yellow Wagtail species. He shared a few photos that he's phone-scoped and it did indeed look like a bona fide male continental Yellow Wagtail species of some sort. I took a quick look through his scope, put the word out and hurried home to get my scope (which I'd not bothered to encumber myself with now that the floods were gone).
Photo courtesy of Thomas Miller
Upon my return I set about examining the bird for myself and comparing it to the photograph that I'd taken on my phone of the appropriate page in the Helm guide. The first thing to note was that it had a grey head of some type but no supercilium at all. That immediately ruled out whole bunch of candidates and left: Grey-headed, Black-headed and Ashy-headed. As other county birders started to arrive we debated the ID back and forth for some time. The bird definitely had a grey rather than black head with a noticeable mask effect, reminiscent of a Lesser Whitethroat. The lack of a black head ruled out Black-headed and so left either Grey or Ashy-headed with the main differentiator between them according to Helm being that Ashy had a strong white throat whereas Grey had a yellow throat. Now, this is where it started to get tricky. As you can see from the photo above, it does at first glance seem to have a white throat but when actually looking at the bird through the scope, it was more of a very pale lemon wash rather than a clean white throat. Thinking about it later, it was certainly possible that in the rather overcast conditions and against the dark head the paler throat was burning out somewhat in the photos, making it look paler than it was. Take a look at the video below where it looks less white than in the above photo, though still definitely paler.
Video courtesy of Badger
Also in this photo below (taken as a grab from the above video) you can see that it's less white looking....
Grab courtesy of Jason Coppock
In the end we realised that we were at the limit of our experience on this and needed to wait for someone who actually knew what to look for to come and tell us what the ID was. Gradually the other birders drifted away but I decided to stay on just so I could keep tabs on the bird until more people came - I knew that IL at least was on his way as he'd called earlier. Eventually the next shift arrived and I headed back to cook a rather late dinner for my son and myself. As I was departing IL arrived and he said that from the photos he'd thought it was a Grey-headed and once he'd had a chance to look at the bird in the field he was soon able to confirm this for definite.
The first wave of twitchers all puzzling over the ID
Interestingly enough, an Ashy-headed Wagtail was actually presently on the Scilly Isles. From looking at photos you can see that there's no doubt about the demarcation between the white throat and the yellow breast - something that was clearly lacking with the Port Meadow bird and which made the Meadow bird the Grey-headed that it turned out to be. So for me one of the take-aways from this is that for the white-throated species in the complex, it's not just that you think the throat might be white - there really shouldn't be any doubt about it.
Ashy-headed Wagtail on Scilly presently, taken from the Scilly Spider blog, all rights reserved
In terms of past records in the county, this is only the third one. The only other two were way back in 1992 where two were found in the same year, one at Farmoor and one on the Downs during a mini national invasion that year. So in terms of rarity this is a definite county Mega!
All in all as they say an educational bird. I'm personally glad to have opened this can of worms and feel that I have a much better grasp of the whole Flava complex now. Now, if only I dared to get to grips with the female side of the complex! Flava's - they're "Harder than you think"
