Another fairly interesting week on patch, and whilst I haven't seen anything particularly exciting in terms of rarity value there have been a few moments which were really worth spending all those hours in the field for! I managed to see last week's Little Gull a couple more times although views have been quite brief - I'm glad that a few more people managed to catch up with it but also quite pleased to not have thousands more photos to sort through!
There have been a steady stream of Caspian Gulls hanging around during the day and in the roost - I think I am now up to eight or nine birds on the meadow for this autumn. 15th December was particularly memorable with five birds present, including the splendid adult male pictured below, which arrived mid morning with a small group of large gulls. An adult Mediterranean Gull also roosted that evening, which was the first that I'd seen for a few weeks.
Adult Caspian Gull
2cy Caspian Gull
Adult Mediterranean Gull
With the amount of flooding recently there has been a lot of wildfowl movement but despite going through all the ducks every day I've failed to turn up anything interesting other than a few Shelduck. When the floods are this large, we occasionally get diving ducks like Tufted Duck, Pochard and even Goldeneye and Smew on the meadow - in fact I had a large flock of Tufted Ducks go straight over one evening which really indicates the level of wildfowl movement around the county at the moment. I did manage to jam in on a female Ring-necked Duck which was found by Stuart Thomson at Dix Pit whilst I happened to be there - one of those on/over the meadow would be amazing, and I did think to check all the ducks in the photo below quite carefully!
Tufted Ducks - this flock of 24 going north was the largest I've seen on patch
The ringed Siberian Chiffchaff has been continuing to show well both in the ditch bordering the floods and in the bushes at the south end of Burgess Field. On 16th December I found a second individual which is a bit more brown and "dusky" than the other one, but seems to have the green and beige tones in the right places with an absence of yellows throughout the plumage.
Siberian Chiffchaff PHX356 in the ditch
The second Siberian Chiffchaff
That transition from beige/brown mantle into the greenish fringe to the edge of the wing and tail feathers is very typical of tristis
As part of our winter Chiffchaff project we carried out a ringing session on 20th December to try and ascertain the number of individuals present in the area. Prior to this I had estimated that there were around ten colybitta with the two tristis - so it was quite a surprise to catch 18 colybitta plus a retrap from last winter. There are still loads of unringed birds around so I think there are probably 30-50 wintering just in this small area of bushes, which is pretty extraordinary for a site that isn't a sewage works. I'd like to try and find out if there is a lot of turnover of birds throughout the winter or whether it will simply be a case of the proportion of ringed birds increasing with the number of ringing sessions - I guess we would need to catch enough to have some sort of mark/recapture population estimate in place for this to work.
colybitta Chiffchaff in the hand
Based on this success I had a quick trip off-patch to check out the Chiffchaff situation at Abingdon Sewage Works and had another Siberian Chiffchaff and two Blackcaps amongst the hordes of Chiffchaffs and tits. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's something rarer from the east (or west, given the Kent Yellow Warbler...) wintering there this year, so I'll make sure to check it after the cold snaps that tend to bring more birds in.
tristis Chiffchaff at Abingdon STW - a classic site for them
On 22nd December I was walking back towards the southern entrance of Port Meadow when I noticed a commotion on the floods. All the ducks suddenly rushed together as a juvenile Peregrine began stooping over them, and I hurried towards the edge of the flood to get in position for photography. I initially wasn't sure what the bird was going for, thinking that it was maybe trying to harass the ducks - but then noticed that there was something floundering in the water in front of the flock. Viewing through the camera's electronic viewfinder was difficult and I couldn't quite work out what it was. I actually thought it was a Lapwing, as I could occasionally see the black and white tail poking out of the water, and only realised that it was a Black-tailed Godwit when I saw it flap its wings. I hadn't seen this bird on the floods when I arrived and its odd position in the water makes me suspect that it was flying over and then been knocked/forced down onto the flood by the Peregrine.
The Godwit was swimming frantically and kept diving under the water to escape the Peregrine - really odd behaviour to observe in a wader.
On its next pass the Peregrine was successful in capturing the Godwit, initially lifting it out of the water whilst the bird was struggling before biting down on the back of its head and dispatching it, presumably by breaking its neck. It then carried its kill out west over the sailing club towards Binsey. I have included as many photos as possible from this crucial moment and I think they illustrate the sequence of events quite well. All over in just a couple of minutes.
A sad end for the Godwit but a real privilege to watch - I hope the Peregrines continue to perform like this over the winter! Unfortunately, the Darvic ring on the Peregrine's left leg isn't legible in any of the images, but it is a BTO scheme so I wonder if it's a locally-hatched bird.
Continuing with the raptor theme, the next morning I had an adult female Merlin zip across the floods, flying east into Burgess Field. One of those moments where you subliminally know what the bird is almost as soon as setting your eyes on it - I didn't even bother with bins, just reached for the camera and even then only managed to get photos once it was already past me. Merlin is recorded very infrequently on Port Meadow (and within the city in general), with the last being in January 2019, hence this is a very welcome patch tick (number 159). I have also seen one over the Wytham Field Station, where the lab/office is located - it was trying to take a Skylark in song-flight. I believe this dubiously made it on to the Port Meadow year list that year, and indeed was on my patch list for a while before I decided to be a bit more strict with the boundaries. More on this in a future post.
Adult female Merlin
Now that I'm away from Oxford until the New Year it looks like that's patch birding for 2024 wrapped up - the next blog post will therefore be a review of the year and targets for 2025.
Wow, what a day. I arrived back in London for Christmas late yesterday and to be honest wasn't really thinking about doing any sort of serious birding after a lot of time spent on patch over the last couple of weeks. I have recently purchased a 2x extender for the Olympus 300mm lens and I wanted to test how well it worked, so decided to head out to the Isle of Sheppey (a favourite location of mine both for birding and fossil hunting). I'd hoped to experiment with photographing distant waders, gulls and geese on the mudflats before doing a bit of raptor watching at Harty Ferry in the evening, but I had only been at Shellness for about half an hour when I received a message saying "You going for the yellow warbler". What!!!
A quick check of Birdguides revealed that, extraordinarily, the bird was located only about 45 minutes drive away, at New Hythe Gravel Pits. It had been found by Glenn Honey along the millstream bordering a sewage works and was apparently showing very well. Obviously all thoughts of further camera testing were abandoned and I hurried back to the car, only to find that I didn't have enough petrol left to get to New Hythe - absolutely classic, Jesus Christ! Having been delayed further by the fuel stop at Morrisons I was particularly antsy during the drive and practically ran from the car to reach the bird.
It was therefore a relief to find that the Yellow Warbler was showing well upon arrival and it continued to do so for the rest of the afternoon. Most of the time it was flycatching quite high up in the alders and was pretty difficult to follow - the running commentary of "tree 2, left side, three quarters up, flown to tree 3" etc. was very amusing! Photographic opportunities were also quite poor, although I like the distant shot of it below as it caught the sunlight - really glowing, I have never seen a bird that is so yellow! It was calling almost continuously at points, which was helpful for locating it, and I have embedded a rather poor quality recording below.
Later in the afternoon it briefly dropped down low into a buddleia to feed, enabling me to get a few record shots. I thought it might roost there but instead it flew back high into the alders and was seemingly settled right at the top of the tree as light fell - people were scoping it as I left.
Also present were a Siberian Chiffchaff and Firecrest feeding with the Chiffchaff flock that the Yellow Warbler was associating with, and a Green Sandpiper was heard calling from the pits. As my first American warbler this was a fantastic early Christmas present and I'm really tempted to go back if it remains over the festive period.
It has been pretty misty and damp for the last couple of days and I've been complaining about the general effect that this has had on birding Port Meadow. It is very difficult to see through the murk with the floods being so large and viewing has been limited to walking the Thames path and hoping to pick out birds loafing close on the riverbank. I had a session at the roost on Thursday evening with Adam and Steve Lavington (visiting from Hampshire) and whilst three Caspian Gulls were present the visibility was so terrible that it was a pretty unsatisfying experience.
Upon opening my curtains on Friday morning and seeing yet another dismal grey and misty view I had basically decided to not bother going out on the patch at all. However as always seems to happen, by midday I was getting slightly antsy about what could be out there and so decided to head out for a quick lunchtime walk.
I locked up my bike by Walton Well car park and began walking towards the flood. I had barely got past the gate when I had a subliminal view of something fluttering over the flood before dipping behind a bund. I knew this had to be a Little Gull and getting bins on the area I had another brief view as it rose up again, clearly feeding over the southern end of the flood - and saw that it was an adult in winter plumage. Seeing how close it was I began running to try and get some pics and was relieved to find it was still there, albeit slightly more distant when I reached the edge of the flood. These first photos are indicative of the initial views - slightly surreal to see it dip feeding in front of an oblivious dog walker throwing sticks into the flood!
I called Adam to let him know that the bird was present and over the next hour or so it stayed very faithful to the southern edge of the flood, fluttering up and down flycatching and offering the most insane views, down to just 3m at times. I feel that this video, taken on my mobile phone, perhaps best conveys just how ridiculously confiding the bird was - I even managed to get a photo of Adam watching the bird with it in the background!
Some of the assembled locals didn't even bother with bins!
Below is a selection of my favourite shots - please click the photos to view at full resolution. It was a real challenge to sort through the 2000 or so images that I took, as the bird showed so well that I managed to capture every conceivable pose, behaviour and background. Unlike my old camera, almost all of the images were basically in focus, so it's not like I could just automatically bin 75% of them due to being soft! The biggest problem with lots of them was the fact that the bird was actually too close, so bits of the bird's reflection were cut off. Even in the gloom, I still mostly managed to keep the ISO below 2000, shooting at F5.6 with 1/2000 shutter speed, so they didn't need much denoising.
The bird was still present this morning, although I only saw it briefly - to be honest, I'm quite glad that was the case as the light was much better and I would have ended up filling another SD card with photos!
