Back in the day, Black-winged Stilt was a real rarity. I remember twitching my first ones back in May 2011 down at St Gothian Sands NR in Cornwall on one of my trips down there. My first Oxon ones were back in 2012 at Pit 60 in Standlake. I remember dashing down there with great excitment for what was a real county blocker back then for the relatively new county birders such as myself. There wasn't another one until May 2023 when one turned up at Otmoor as part of the bonkers county spring purple patch. I duly went to pay homage - there's something altogether exotic about a Stilt that it's always worth the effort.
So when Max Buckley found one in April of this year, it would have been rude not to go and take a look. In fact I went the morning that it had been found on a rather blustery and overcast day. As the bird was on Big Otmoor I parked up at the Noke end in order to walk in from that end. As I was parking up I met SM who told me that the bird was very hard to see on the ground and was usually seen in flight. "Hmmm" I thought, "maybe this won't be the quick and easy visit I was hoping for". Still I was there now and headed off towards the bridleway that runs along the southern edge of Big Otmoor hoping that I would be rewarded for my effort.
Once there, I soon discovered that actually I was feeling a bit under the weather with what felt like the ominous onset of a cold brewing. There was indeed no sign of the Stilt with just some rather cold looking younger birders standing around wondering what to do. BM and AS were also there but no one knew where to look. In the end, rather than just standing around in the cold I decided to work my way eastwards along the bridleway, stopping and scanning at every gap in the hedge that afforded a viewing spot.
I had almost reached the eastern end of the Big Otmoor when I managed to find it by scanning diagonally from the south east corner of Big Otmoor (where it was a little bit higher) all the way across to the north west corner. There it was, picking its way over a marshy vegetated area in all its Stilty glory. I put the news out and headed back to the western end now that I knew where to look. En route I picked up BM and AS again and eventually we managed to see it from the western end though it took a surprisingly long period of time before we could all get on it as there were so many hollows and dips that the bird would often be completely hidden. Still it looked very exotic in amongst the drab greens and browns of the marshy habitat, and well worth the effort it took actually to see it.
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| The Black-winged Stilt courtesy of the original finder, Max Buckley |
In the end it stayed for about a week, usually distant and partially hidden except for one afternoon when it showed well on the new Noke Pool. I expect they will become more common in this county in the coming years which can only be a good thing.
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| The Stilt on Noke Pool courtesy of Thomas Miller |
