Rosy Grip-back at Farmoor

I recall a coversation with fellow county birders a while back where I mentioned in passing that an Oxon Roseate Tern was one of those "drop everything" birds that I was waiting for. This species has been impossible to twitch in the county with just the occasional single observer fly-through at Farmoor. Impossible that is until August 2018 where JD found one that stayed all day that everyone who was around was able to connect to. Unfortunately I had been away on holiday that week so there was a gaping hole in my county list and given how rare they are in the county I had little expectation of filling it any time soon. So when JD did it once again with a pair at Farmoor I couldn't believe it! True to my word I did indeed drop everything, got my gear together and sped straight off to Farmoor. A hands-free call to JD en route reassured me that they were sitting contentedly on a buoy albeit being surrounded by a flottilla of miniature remote control sailing yatchs! Reassured I sped on and thanks to light traffic made the journey from door to Farmoor car park in about 15 minutes. I raced up the bank and along the reservoir path towards the small gathering of people (both birders and toy yatchers) by the old yatch club huts. As I got nearer a quick glance through the bins gave me two small tern-sized blobs sitting on the nearest buoy and I could relax.

Apart from four people sailing their remote control yatchs (now merficully away from the Terns) there were only half a dozen birders present, including Badger who, like me had missed them first time around. The birds were sitting very quietly and contentedly and giving superb views. I remarked that these were in fact the best views I'd ever had of a Roseate Tern with my only previous sighting being a distant heat hazy view of one standing on top of a nesting box on an island in the lagoon at Brownsea Island way back in 2009.

Posing nicely on the buoy

The buoy was pretty close in so was just about in reach of my super zoom camera (see above). I also took some digiscoped video of the bird and spent a little while admiring them. As a pair of adult birds they even had a pink flush to their breast and were looking very smart indeed.

Digiscoped video

After a while they started to look more restless and took off. It was most interesting to view them in flight. They looked small with shallower rapid wingbeats, altogether different from a Common Tern in flight. I'd half expected their longer tail streamers to stand out in flight but they actually weren't that noticeable. It was most instructive to see them in the air like this, only a shame that there weren't any Commons flying around to compare them with. 

I couldn't linger too long so soon headed back to the car and back home. Still, Farmoor had delivered me a second county Mega grip-back this year after the Purple Sandpiper last month. A great grip-back indeed!