A Waxwing Winter

I'm sure that all birders are already aware that this year is an irruption year for Waxwings. These charismatic winter vistors normally only grace our shores in modest numbers each winter, usually up in Scotland or along the east coast of the country. However, occasionally we get a "Waxwing Winter", an irruption year when they come over in much greater numbers. During such winters, they gradually work their way down the country and further inland so in such years Oxfordshire has a fighting chance of hosting them as well. This winter, I, along I'm sure with lots of other county birders, watched with impatience as the line of reported Waxwing sightings crept gradually southwards down the country. When it got more or less in line with Oxon it seemed that some invisible force field was keeping them out as counties on either side of us were getting sightings but we were not. There were one or two single-observer untwitchable records in the county, only "possible" or "probable" - it was all very frustrating. In December, in frustration I buckled and made a sortie in Bucks to near High Wycombe where there had been regular sightings. However, the Waxwings weren't seen that morning I got no reward for standing in the cold for three hours. There was one county sighting where they were reported just outside the Oxford ringroad near Hinksey which I thought was close enough to warrant a try for them. However, despite some great looking berry bushes, there was no sign of any Waxwings.

Early in the new year I was pondering going to see the Northern Waterthrush on the Friday after it was first found. However, the lack of firm news first thing rather put me off so instead I elected to pop over to Cheltenham where there were some pretty much guaranteed Waxwings to be had at Naunton Park. EU had already messaged to say that he was going for them and reported that four had been seen this morning though had presently flown off. When I arrived they'd just turned up again with five companions. They were immediately on view in their "lookout tree" which was surrounded by four Sorbus trees as well as quite a few photographers, all waiting for them to descend once more on the berries. 

Naunton Park, Cheltenham: there were four Sorbus trees surrounding a larger central look-out tree

Sitting in their look-out tree

 

...and on a berry raid!

For the next three quarters of an hour they would make occasional raids onto the berries where they would stuff their faces as quickly as possible before heading back to the safety of their lookout tree. After that, they flew up into a more distant very large tree where they were little more than blobs sitting in the tree top. Then they flew off somewhere else. EU and I decided to go and find a café where we ejoyed a pleasant chat as we put the world to rights.

We came back to find the Waxwings were back in a different distant tree. Suddenly they came back down to their lookout tree and the whole process started again. The crowd has grown in the meantime and there was more furious papping and we too joined in. After a while I felt I'd had my fill and decided to go. At last I'd managed to catch up with these beautful birds.

Oxford Waxwings

At last in January, Oxfordshire started to get some definite sightings. Again, single observer and untwitchable but there was a noticeable uptick in reports. Then one evening someone on my local Port Meadow patch WhatsApp group reported that his father had casually mentioned to him that there had been a couple of Waxwings in some trees by the start of the Aristotle Lane footbridge over into Port Meadow. With the various members having been alerted, people started to look out for them again the next day and mid-morning, low and behold they turned up again. I was on the way out to do the weekly food shop with my VLW so we stopped off for a tick and run view of them sitting up in an Ash Tree lookout tree. Later that day I returned to find them still there and making occasional raids on the Sorbus bush.

A slightly blurry photo taking in the fading light

There were initially just a couple of adult birds but the next day they brought some youngsters along with 5 first winter birds also present. They were usually in the same location, using either an Ash Tree or a Silver Birch as the look-out tree before descending to the Sorbus for a berry raid. It was during the raid that all the photographers tried to get photos though these raids were often fleeting and the birds often obscured. On one occasion the flock relocated a few hundred yards down the round in someone's back garden where they could be seen resting in a more distant look-out tree. However, it was the original Sorbus Tree where most of the action was. On one occasion I managed to take some relatively OK video footage of some of the berry raids.

The Waxwings were with us for about a week or so, though not every day and not always reliable. Still, they were the first proper twitchable birds within the county and many people managed to catch up with them. At the time of writing, things have gone rather quiet on the Waxwing front with no reports in the county for a while now. Let's hope we get a few more before the winter is out.

 

 

 

 

The Heybridge Northern Waterthrush

Most birders with their finger anywhere remotely near the pulse of the birding news network will be aware of the Northern Waterthrush currently in residence in Heybridge in Essex. This is in all probability yet another American bird blown over in the Great Storm of '23 that dumped so many Nearctic passerines on our shores. This one wasn't discovered until the 3rd January when an incredulous local birder spotted it in his garden. Fortunately it was subsequently found to be frequenting a nearby creek and so began a mass twitching frenzy to try to see it. It is only the 8th record for the UK and only the third ever mainland bird so this was definitely a Mega! Despite it's name, it is of course actually a Nearctic Warbler, breeding in Canada and northern America and wintering in northern South America. It frequents thickets near to water and looks a bit thrush-like - hence the name.

At only two hours drive from my house, it was very much on my radar, but as well as distance, I have a "probability of seeing it" filter as well. By all accounts this bird wasn't that easy to see. It would go missing for long periods of time and quite a few people managed to dip it. So I decided to wait to see if it would develop some kind of pattern for being seen. By the end of the first weekend, people had realised that standing right next to the creek was the main issue with the bird being so elusive and by standing back it would show quite readily. It was also most reliable at first light, often feeding away for up to an hour at a time before disappearing for a while. It would usually (but not always) then put in a mid to late morning showing and after that it was very unreliable until it came into roost again at dusk. 

Having established all this, I decided that being there at first light was the best tactic but the prospect of battling my way around the M25 before dawn on what would in all probability be far too little sleep was not that appealing. So instead I decided to travel up on Monday night and to stay at an Air BnB some 15 minutes away at Danbury. En route there were a couple of minor issues: my offside dipped headlight bulb failed and there were repeated ominous "Road Ahead Closed" signs as I approached my destination. Fortunately the latter turned out to be 100 yards just beyond my cottage turn off though it did make me sweat a little. The BnB was warm and comfortable and I was soon settled in for the night.

The next day I was up and back on the road just before 7 am. There was a surprisingly large amount of traffic on the roads but I made the short hop to Heybridge easily enough. A bit of pre trip research had unearthed an industrial estate along Bates Rd as a good parking location with the twitch site being a mere 5 minute walk from the end of this road. The temperature was going to be around freezing first thing so I was well wrapped up as I hurried in the darkness along the path, onto the road so familiar from Streetview planning, before finally turning the corner to see about thirty or so hushed twitchers in the pre dawn darkness, waiting for the light and hopefully the bird as well. I met JT from Oxon in the twitcher line and we chatted quietly as we waited for the show to start.

Waiting in the darkness...

It was only about 7:20 when someone in the line with a thermal imager said that he could see it and a few people around me managed to see some movement in the same general area. By around 7:30 it was just light enough so that peering into the dark one could make out the silhouette of what was clearly the bird. It was feeding away at close quarters around the sluice gate. Gradually as the light improved so did the views and the bird seemed quite happy to continue feeding despite all the birders up on the ridge above looking down on it.

Because of the poor light I resorted to some hand-held video to start with

After that it became a question of trying to get a decent photo of it. The fact that the light was so poor still and the bird was constantly on the move meant that it was nearly impossible to get a decent photo with my relatively low tech camera and shot after shot came out blurred. In the end most of my shots are of "record shot" quality and don't really represent the quality of the views that we were getting. It was often showing down to about 5 yards and one couldn't have asked for better views. It's brown upper parts and streaked underparts and the way that it hunted along the water shoreline very much reminded me of a Rock Pipit though its smart elongated supercilium and more well-defined elongated breast streaking were both very different from the smudgy vagueness of that other species.

A couple of blurry photos of the bird. There was no issue with how close the bird was, just the poor light and the fact that it was constantly on the move

Me in the blue woolly hat peering at the Waterthrush, courtesy of JT

The famous (and much photographed) creek. The bird would feed all along the shoreline
including  right up against the concrete edge.

A proper photo of the Northern Waterthrush taken later in the day, courtesy of Ewan Urquhart

Fellow Oxon Birder PL turned up, fortunately in time for the first showing and immediately connected with the bird. As per the schedule, it was basically on show for about an hour, nearly always at a close distance though it did occasinally move further up the creek. Then suddenlly, it flew off into a nearby tree, worked its way from bush to bush before feeding briefly in the creek on the other side of the ridge on which we were standing. Then it decided that the morning show was over and it flew off. I contemplated hanging around in the cold for what could be a couple of hours in order to get a better photo and decided against it. PL stayed a bit longer than me but I wandered back to the car, stopping to admire the scenery now that it was light enough to see it.

Looking towards Maldon and the River Blackwater

After some hot tea and a snack back in the car I pondered what to do. In the end I decided to try for a Red-breasted Goose at Bradwell-on-Sea, a salt marsh some 40 minutes away. I drove down increasingly windy and narrow country roads until, some 2 miles from the destination I came across a gate across the road where it became private with walking access only. I got out of the car to find that the forecast increase in wind had indeed happened - it was bloody freezing! The prospect of slogging 2 miles there and back and trying to pick out a distant Red-breasted Goose in a flock of Brents in what was an extremely cold and strong wind was just not that appealing. So I got back in the car and retraced my steps and instead pointed the Sat Nav for home. I arrived back at Casa Gnome in time for lunch with my first lifer of the year safely under my belt.

End of Year Review

As usual, my end of review is a fashionably late January one. I find that Christmas is just too busy a time for me to find time to write it. By all measures it was a very good year. Other bloggers have written about their amazing lifer additions for the year and, whilst I was more restrained in what I went for, I too had a good addition to my national life list. But I'll come to that in due course. As usual my review is split into patch, county, national and other stuff.

Port Meadow Patch

As usual, I've done a separate full review of the Port Meadow Patch year which you can read here. So to summarise, it was a record breaking year with a year list total of 148, smashing the previous record of 141. If you look at the headline birds from the year, it makes for amazing reading:

SMEW
MARSH HARRIER

ROCK/WATER PIPIT

WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE
WILLOW TIT
SIBERIAN CHIFFCHAFF x 2
LITTLE GULL
MERLIN
KITTIWAKE x 2
WOOD WARBLER
MANDARIN DUCK
SANDWICH TERN
ARCTIC TERN x 2
SHORT-EARED OWL
NIGHTINGALE
CROSSBILL

WOODCOCK
RED-CRESTED POCHARD 

Drilling down into more detail it was a year of two halves: all the action happened in the first half and autumn was completed dead. November and December did provide the Smew and a second Marsh Harrier as well as some more Siberian Chiffchaff action but that was about it. The bird of the year was the American Wigeon though sadly it was only seen by a single observer on the Meadow before it relocated to Otmoor.

American Wigeon courtesy of Thomas Miller - the Port Meadow "Bird of the Year"

Oxon County Birding

Like Port Meadow, the county too had a very good year with an amazing spring purple patch. But things all started earlier than that in March when a drake Lesser Scaup turned up at Farmoor. This was a long overdue county tick for me as the previous easily available one was before my time when I started birding.

The Farmoor Lesser Scaup

As I said above, spring was when it all kicked off. In quick succession the county was graced with a singing Spotted Crake, a single-observer Night Heron, a Black-winged Stilt, a Temminck's Stint, a Montagu's Harrier and a Golden Oriole. Apart from the Night Heron and the Harrier I caught up with all these bird. In particular the Golden Oriole was a county tick that I never thought I'd get. What's more, it was even on show for an extended period of time - quite unprecedented for this species which is normally extremely skulking. You can read up on all of these birds here.

The showy Golden Oriole

 

Having missed the Night Heron in the spring (though I did reckon that I heard it), everyone thought that was it. However in July, it (or another one - there'd been a national influx) turned up at Drayton on a small pond which everyone got to see so that county bogey bird was finally put to rest.

The Drayton Night Heron

Just as for Port Meadow, the second half of the year was completely dead apart from a Pallid Harrier that I missed whilst seeing the Brown Booby (see below). Whilst the official county bird of the year was the Harrier, for me it has to be the Golden Oriole. To get views that good was something I never thought would happen in the county. 

To round off this section, below is the traditional Oxon Birding Review montage set to the usual inappropriate music.

The Oxon Birding Review for 2023

 

National Birding

My national life list is a cherished part of my birding and I'm pleased to say that this year I got 7 shiny new ticks, more than my usual average of 5 which I've had for the last few years since I got my BOU list above 400.  It all started with a King Eider (not a lifer) up at Redcar as part of one of my occasional Durham trips to ferry Daughter #1 to or from her home in the North East. It was hard work picking out the bird at extreme distance in the strong wind but I managed it in the end.

 

The Redcar King Eider courtesy of Damian Money

The next national trip was to Seaford in May for the White-crowned Sparrow (my first lifer). Fortunately I went on the last day it was there and got good views as well.

 

The Seaford White-crowned Sparrow

 

It wasn't until August that I had my next national birding trip, this time to Arne for the long staying Forster's Tern (another lifer) which was nice and straight-forward to connect with. With Honey Buzzard afters, it was a nice trip. 

The Arne Forster's Tern

September was the top month of the year with no less than three trips, all for lifers. The first was a trip over the border into Wales to get a little piece of the amazing American warbler fest that happened in Wales. This was in the form of the second Magnolia Warbler of the Year for the UK, this one in Baglan.

The Magnolia Warbler courtesy of Ewan Urquhart

A few days later there was another warbler twitch, this time down to Sussex for the long staying Aquatic Warbler. This species is usually impossible to twitch so when one set up camp along a river bank and was comparatively easy to see it was a no brainer to go for it.

 

The Aquatic Warbler courtesy of Joe Tobias

The third tick for September was when I had to take Daughter #2 all the way up to Aberdeen for the start of her Master's degree. On the way back down I stopped off at Teeside for the Brown Booby which showed well throughout the time I was there.

 

The Teeside Brown Booby

That was it until November when I first had a little trip over the border into Gloucestershire to see the Purple Heron there. Unfortunately, whereas others had had crippling views of it in previous days, all I got was about 30 seconds before it flew off, never to be seen again.

The Whelford Purple Heron courtesy of Ewan Urquhart

There was one more national twitch that I went on. This was a trip over to Norfolk for the long-staying Pallid Swift, followed by the Canvasback for afters. The swift was easy but the duck was hard though in the end I saw it well enough. Pallid Swift is one of those species that I thought I would probably never see so to have an obliging twitchable bird like this was too good an opportunity to pass up.

The Pallid Swift courtesy of Nick Truby

So that was my national birding. In terms of national bird of the year they were all pretty much "good ticks" to get. However, I guess it has to be the Magnolia Warbler. American warblers are just so stunning to look at compared to our drab birds.

Other Stuff

There was some other stuff that I went for during the year, mostly orchids and odonata. In early spring I saw the Oxon Giant Orchids that had newly been discovered. I guess it will become an annual trip to see them now.

One of the Giant Orchids

There was also a trip up to Scotland in June when I finally caught up with some of the Scottish speciality orchids (Lesser Twayblades and Coralroot) as well as Northern Damselfly. There are still a few more of both orchids and odonata that I need so another trip will probably happen this year as well.

Northern Damselfly

So that was my birding year. It only remains for me to wish all my readers a belated Happy New Year and to a fulfilling birding year ahead for all.