Pink-footed Goose!

The Pink-footed Goose - a patch and county tick!

I have been stuck inside for a couple of days doing the university admissions interviews so it was a relief to finally get out to Port Meadow again this afternoon. The conditions were almost perfect for the roost, being fairly overcast with low wind speeds, with the floods receding just enough to expose a line of islands along the banks of the Thames.

I decided to view from the Thames path and walked north from the Perch towards where most of the gulls were loafing. Almost immediately I picked out the regular 2cy Caspian Gull that has been around for a couple of weeks now, together with two Yellow-legged Gulls. Slightly further north was a very nice 1cy Caspian Gull which I think I have also seen a couple of times previously, but this is by far the best views I have had of it - what a bird! This is my favourite sort of scapular pattern in Caspian Gulls, with the only markings being a fine line down the middle of each feather.

Digiscoped image of the 1cy Caspian Gull

Another digiscope of the 2cy Caspian Gull

An intriguing subadult individual was also present along with the 1cy, which I think is probably a 4cy Caspian x Herring Gull hybrid. I considered the possibility that it could be a very advanced 3cy Caspian Gull, which might explain the lack of long white tongues on the underside of the primaries, but there are also multiple things wrong about the structure/head shape.

Hybrid together with the 1cy Caspian Gull

It was getting pretty dark so I put my camera down and was searching through the masses of arriving gulls in the gloom when I heard a "wink wink" call overhead. I looked up and saw a small, short-necked goose fly directly over me - I panicked slightly as the camera was on the floor, but managed to get a few shots of it as it went east before continuing north over the flood, skirting the margin of Burgess Field. I actually thought I had taken a lot more photos but it turns out I had fumbled badly wearing thick gloves and mostly missed the shutter button!

I do not hear "grey geese" very often so am not too familiar with the calls, although it sounded different to the feral Gambel's White-fronted Geese that sometimes roost on the meadow. Therefore I thought it was probably a Pink-footed Goose or maybe an outside chance of a Bean Goose, but at the same time was anxious that I had misheard and therefore didn't want to report it until I had checked the photos (not that it was twitchable anyway). I was getting very cold at this point but just before I left, I had another 2cy Caspian Gull, which I was quite pleased with as I was pretty sure I had seen a second 2cy bird last week but it was too far away to clinch as I was viewing from Burgess Field gate. Three Caspian Gulls in an evening is pretty good going for the Port Meadow roost!

Upon downloading the photos from the camera I was slightly frustrated to find that they were all poor quality, being extremely noisy and dark. I've reproduced them here basically unedited apart from cropping and bumping up the contrast/shadows a bit - it seems that denoising them just obscured the limited detail visible. I had hoped that I would have been able to reveal some bill detail but the bird is just too small in the frame.

Despite this, I think the photos are identifiable as a Pink-footed Goose - the thin tail band with plenty of white at the tip eliminates Bean Goose, whilst the overall compact shape and head/bill profile, together with the dark rump and wing pattern, prove that I wasn't going mad and photographed a Greylag Goose or something. I circulated the photos around a hurriedly-assembled "rarities committee", who luckily all agreed that it looks good for Pink-footed Goose, so I put the news out. Bizarrely, it seems that Birdguides rejected the submission, which has never happened to me before.

I think this really shows the importance of always carrying the camera as I definitely wouldn't have been confident enough to claim this based on just hearing it call and getting poor views through bins/scope - it would have just gone down as "probable grey goose sp.". The Pink-footed Goose therefore becomes my 158th patch bird and is also a county tick - this species is surprisingly rare in Oxfordshire (much less than annual, often untwitchable) and I'm aware that there are a few big county listers still missing it from their totals!

Storm Darragh

Purple Sandpiper at Farmoor

I braved the winds on Saturday and went out walking on Port Meadow in the hope of some storm-driven seabird. No such luck, but there were quite a lot of gulls lingering over the floods - usually they disperse during the day but I assume they must have been grounded. The individual below caught my eye and I'm still puzzling a bit over its identity. When I initially saw it fly past through bins I assumed it was a Caspian Gull (largely due to the white underwing and general structure), but it has a tail pattern that is much more typical of Yellow-legged Gull (in fact, out of hundreds of Caspian Gulls I don't think I've ever seen one with a tail like this) and very dark wing feathers with reduced inner primary window. To me the face/eye position and head shape are a bit weird as well.

After getting a few opinions it seems that my initial impression was correct and that it's most likely to be a Caspian Gull (presumably a large male). Usually I find that most individuals are fairly easy to assign to either Caspian Gull or Yellow-legged Gull (a much trickier problem is the separation of some Yellow-legged Gulls and Lesser Black-backed Gulls) so always good to come across an instructive bird like this.

Late morning on Sunday after an unsuccessful morning walk I received a message on the WhatsApp group from Ewan Urquhart saying that he had found a Purple Sandpiper at Farmoor. The reservoir has good form with inland Purple Sandpipers, with the concrete slopes apparently being as appealing as the rocky shore to displaced individuals, and this is the 22nd record. I was keen to see this bird as it's been a couple of years since the last one in the county and they are often very confiding. I picked up Ben Sheldon and headed down to the southwest corner of the larger basin, F2, where the bird had been found. It was raining by this point and the light wasn't great, but the bird was very tame and showed down to a couple of metres. It looks like a first-winter, with some retained juvenile coverts.

Ben Sheldon photographing the Purple Sandpiper

Below is a little gallery of the various poses and behaviour that the Purple Sandpiper was displaying. I'm not entirely sure what it was finding to eat, but looking at the photos the morsels don't seem to be very tasty.

Week of birding

Juvenile Herring Gull on Port Meadow - amazing light that evening

I've been able to get out birding most days this week and I feel that enough has happened to warrant another blog post. The weekend of 23-24th November I was at Portland and happened to coincide with the arrival of Storm Bert - absolutely fearsome conditions! Seawatching yielded a few Sooty, Balearic and Manx Shearwaters (good records this late in the season), Great Skua, Eider, Common Scoter, and all three Divers, but not the hoped-for Leaches' Petrel. As expected there were very few passerines on the land, with a Blackcap in the obs garden being the only thing worth noting.

Common Scoter passing the Bill, some massive waves

2cy Herring Gull - I'm guessing this is an argentatus with those little P10 mirrors

Sooty Shearwater - actually taken from inside the obs!

Caspian Gull in the harbour - still a fairly uncommon bird on Portland, the second I've found there

Returning to Oxford on 25th November I was quite surprised to see that the effects of Storm Bert had extended far inland, with flooding all around the city and Port Meadow having returned to "lake mode".

The calm after the storm - can never get enough of Port Meadow sunsets

There was quite a large gull roost that evening although viewing was tricky from the riverbank, with most of the birds very distant. I had a nice 1cy Caspian Gull (the second of the winter) but my attention was quickly diverted to an interesting looking 1cy Common Gull that I picked up flying in to the roost from the south. It offered fairly prolonged views as it flew around and displayed several really interesting features - notably a white, quite contrasty underwing with a seemingly dark secondary bar, unpatterned white uppertail coverts and a white head with a little boa of neck streaking. It almost looked like a mini Caspian Gull - I don't think I've ever seen one before that has displayed all these features at this time of year. Most canus Common Gulls are quite heavily streaked in November, and my immediate thought was that this could be a candidate for Russian Common Gull, i.e. subspecies heinei.

Unfortunately I didn't have the camera with me so I was only able to take some digiscoped photos when it had already settled quite far away. I'm not sure if the bill base is pink, which is the other identification feature to look out for, but it certainly seems quite bright and saturated from the photo compared with the insipid greyish-green of most 1cy canus. A record like this, at this distance, can never be proved, and this is actually the second heinei candidate I've had on the meadow - the other was a 3cy in January that I previously wrote about here. My hope is that later in winter, when the floods are a bit smaller, I'll get more chances to scrutinise the Common Gulls more closely and get some photos of the diagnostic primary pattern of 2nd-year and adult birds.

A bit of imagination required here - the photo really doesn't convey how striking this looked in the field!

On 27th November I had an unusually twitchy day, which started when a Black Redstart was reported in Christ Church Meadow. I have a bit of a soft spot for Black Redstarts, and indeed the location, as I found one there myself as an undergraduate in 2019. I had only brief views of the bird in flight but saw that it had a fairly prominent wing panel and was therefore a male.

After this excitement I wasn't prepared for another gripping message to the Oxon birding WhatsApp group - news of a Snow Bunting found by Dai John on the Farmoor causeway! This would be a county tick for me and I was very keen to see it. The journey to Farmoor was long and torturous as for various reasons I had driven into town that day rather than take the bike, so to get back to the car quickly I decided to take one of the Voi e-scooters (I reserve this for desperate occasions only), drove half an hour to Farmoor and then shamelessly sprinted down the causeway as of course it was at the furthest end away from the car park. I have not run for a bird for a very long time!

There has been some discussion surrounding the bird's age - initially suggested as a 1cy male nivalis, I noticed that it seemed to have adult-shaped tail feathers in the field and Ben Sheldon also pointed out that the pattern of the scapular feathers are a better match for a female than a male. Some close scrutiny of the photos indicates that despite the appearance of solidly white greater coverts, these are actually just the tips/fringes of the feathers, which are tightly folded and partially covered by the scapulars. Overall the pattern of the visible coverts is also a better fit for female. I'm still struggling to rule out the possibility of a 1cy female but I think an adult is most likely. There was no sign of the bird the following morning.

Adam, Ewan, Jason and Roger on the causeway at the Snow Bunting twitch - a bit of "accidental Renaissance" in the composition of this photo...

On 30th November I went back to have another go at the 1cy Black Redstart, being rather unsatisfied with my experience earlier in the week - I decided to go very early in the morning to avoid disturbance by all the tourists. Upon arrival the bird was nowhere to be seen, but I remembered that the one I found had had a habit of roosting in a bush behind a set of wheelie bins next to the wall of Christ Church. This hunch proved correct as the bird soon emerged and posed up nicely, first on the bins and then on a small parapet. I was hoping to photograph it flitting around on the vines growing on the wall, as this would offer some aesthetic compositions and chance to get it with spread tail, but no luck today. 

Greater covert break clearly visible in this photo - some 1cy males develop a black mask and chest as part of their postjuvenile moult whilst others remain looking like female/juvenile types over the winter

These images were taken at 10000 and 5000 ISO respectively so were very noisy out of camera - luckily, the RAW files from the OM1 respond well to denoising. Still, I'd like to get some photos in better light, which should be possible if it hangs around for a while.

Mid morning I attempted to twitch a pair of Bearded Tits which had been reported at Radley Lakes - I cycled down with Ben Sheldon which was my first slightly longer ride since crashing my road bike just before going to Hong Kong. No sign of the target birds although minor consolation with a Brambling calling over the pits and lots of Chiffchaffs in the reeds. In the evening I did the Port Meadow roost and had a nice 2cy Caspian Gull along with a couple of Yellow-legged Gulls.

Always tricky to decide whether to digiscope distant birds or try and do some sort of mega-crop using the camera - in this instance the latter worked out well as I managed to capture a wing flap, revealing the diagnostic primary pattern of 2cy Caspian Gull

On 1st December I had another morning dipping the Bearded Tits before heading to Port Meadow in the afternoon. I had mentioned to Ben the previous day that it was about time for the first wintering Siberian Chiffchaffs to turn up in Oxford so I had this in mind as I walked down towards Burgess Field gate. A few colybitta Chiffchaffs were flycatching and flitting around in the bushes just inside Burgess Field so I began pishing a bit to draw more out and almost immediately I noticed a pale bird quite low down and partially obscured by branches. Getting bins on it I saw that not only was it an obvious tristis, but also that it was ringed! We have only ever ringed one Siberian Chiffchaff at this site, last winter, although there were also two other unringed tristis overwintering - therefore, it was an exciting thought that this might be a chance to confirm the presence of a returning bird.

However, it quickly melted away into the bush and the following fifteen minutes of trying to get a photo of the ring were incredibly frustrating! I eventually resorted to tape luring the bird using a recording of tristis song in order to get it to come out in the open and sit still for a moment. This is not something that I would usually do just to get a photo (despite tape luring being a routine part of catching birds for ringing), but I felt that in this instance it was justified in order to record the ring number - which, after all, was literally the whole point of ringing the bird in the first place. I managed get one "record shot" and another which is slightly more artistic in terms of the composition, although both are a bit washed out in places due to all the foliage in front of the bird.

Examining the photos on the back of the camera I could see that it was definitely a BTO ring (bearing the word "London") and that the first letter was "P", so I knew that it was highly likely that to be one of our ring strings. Squinting a bit more it seemed that the last digit was either a 6 or an 8 so I texted a couple members of the ringing group asking them to look up the ring number of the tristis we had previously ringed on DemOn and they quickly responded to confirm that it was PHX356 - this had to be our bird!

I have included below the edited closeups that show that the ring is PH---6 and thus almost certain to be PHX356. The bird also looks identical to previous winters and behaves in the same way - being rather tame (it once almost landed on a Port Meadow regular!) and favouring the ditch next to Burgess Field gate. It is a weirdly quiet individual, barely if ever calling, although it has previously been heard singing a bit in late March/early April.

The bird was ringed on 29/11/2023 along with nine colybitta Chiffchaffs at the northwest end of Burgess Field, as part of our long-term winter Chiffchaff project. We didn't give the bird a definite age in the hand although speculated that it could be an adult due to the large and pristine white primary tips. Indeed, the year before a Siberian Chiffchaff similarly wintered in this exact spot (it was actually the first record for Port Meadow) and we did think that we could well have caught that same returning bird - so this could be its third winter here.

PHX356 immediately after being ringed last year

It is amazing to think that this individual has probably made the journey from its breeding grounds in Siberia to winter in Port Meadow at least twice and really shows that Siberian Chiffchaffs have established a regular migration route that includes wintering in the UK. I am not sure how common year-on-year recoveries of birds are, but would be interested to see how much evidence there is for returning birds (vital for the establishment of a novel migration strategy) and also to compare with Yellow-browed Warbler.

Later in the afternoon I had the 2cy Caspian Gull in the roost again and was also pleased to see a Knot - this had been reported the day before whilst I was dipping the Bearded Tits and I was pretty gripped as it was a long overdue patch tick for me (number 157 on the list). It stayed quite distant with the Lapwing flock for most of the time but at dusk it did a fly around and I managed to get a couple of record shots.

The best viewing spot I could find with the floods being so massive

Another scenic Burgess Field sky

Overall a very pleasant week with lots of birds, albeit nothing much in terms of personal finds. Since the  weather has generally been okay for photography I've been able to keep up practising with the camera - so I'll end with a few miscellaneous photos from the patch that I'm happy with.

Great White Egret with church in the background

Mistle Thrush

One of the overwintering Stonechats