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