Green Sandpiper and Reflections

Green Sandpiper - a relatively uncommon migrant wader on Port Meadow

After my last blog post I've been reflecting a bit on my current attitude towards the patch. After a good autumn and some rather optimistic new year plans, it it's become clear that I've lost quite a bit of motivation and my visits are often ending with negative feelings towards birding. I do think there has been an unusually long time without finding anything that I deem interesting, but I was wondering why I was feeling that way when there have been some objectively good records - e.g. the Siberian Chiffchaff. Some of the feedback I've received both online and in person has prompted me to think a bit more deeply about the philosophy of patch birding and after writing down my thoughts this blog post is the result.

Out on the patch this morning it was almost breezeless and the water was very still, so there were some fantastic reflections. I spent a while photographing a Great White Egret and a Grey Heron at close range and I've used the photos to illustrate this post, which seems fitting. The highlight of the morning was a Green Sandpiper that dropped in briefly before melting away along the ditch. Not a common bird here - in fact, we failed to record any last year, so it was pleasing to find and even better decided to pose up nicely for photos.

Port Meadow is a strange "in-betweener" as far as inland patches go - not quite at the level of some of the big Midlands reservoirs, where you can almost expect to jam in on overland movements when they're happening, but it's definitely one of the best sites in the county and has a bit of a pedigree in terms of rare bird records over the years. I've yet to compile a full patch list, including historic records, but I reckon it's somewhere around the 200 mark. It's therefore difficult to treat it just like a walk around a local park (or watching the back garden), where even new records of common birds, or a bit of interesting behaviour, are often enough to generate some excitement. There is a level of expectation involved with it which is much higher than most other inland patches, and it has been watched intensively for many years.

The truth, though, is that Port Meadow is still just a muddy puddle within the Oxford ring road - it isn't a nature reserve, isn't managed specifically for birds, doesn't have hides or contain many different habitat types and, crucially, is subject to a lot of disturbance from the public. I also suspect that the presence of Farmoor just a few miles away has a negative effect - the reservoir presumably acts as a massive beacon for any flyover migrants looking for water to rest on, sucking them down and causing most of the Little Gulls, Kittiwakes, Arctic and Black Terns to miss Port Meadow entirely. It's a good patch, but I've definitely been fooled into thinking that its potential is far higher than it really is. With this mindset comes the unhealthy feeling that spending more time out birding will inevitably result in more birds being found, and that the reason why I didn't see any Little Gulls during the recent influx was simply due to not being there all the time - they MUST have occurred, right?! In reality, with a patch like this it's mostly about luck. I don't think I would feel this way about Little Gulls if I was just going around the University Parks.

There is also an element of the law of diminishing returns beginning to kick in, combined with a perception that the quality of birding at the site is decreasing. I'll use the gull roost as an example of this saturation effect. Through the the winter of 2024/2025, I've had 60 "bird-days" of Caspian Gull according to my eBird records. This metric, often used by bird observatories, is the accumulated encounters for a species, not considering whether individuals seen on subsequent days refer to the same bird. There have likely been up to fifteen different birds in the roost this winter. This is in stark contrast to when I first started birding the meadow, when we were lucky to get five bird-days, usually involving just one or two individuals. I still remember how I excited I was when I finally managed to pick out one by myself on the Meadow. It was a stunning 1cy in November - I had found a few previously in London and Kent so I knew what to look for but wasn't very confident. Now I must have seen hundreds in Oxfordshire.

Caspian Gulls have of course become much more common throughout Britain and there is also an observer effect as I've gradually improved at identifying them - particularly at long range, in poor light or as flyovers. They are now a staple of the winter roost, just like Yellow-legged Gull. The apparent devaluing of Caspian Gull as a patch bird, therefore, has implications for motivation through the winter. Instead of there being a bit of excitement when one is recorded, it has become a case of "just another Caspian Gull" or indeed it actually being a bad day when I fail to find one in the roost! This is combined with the decline in records of white-wingers - the last Iceland Gull that I found was in 2018, and I've yet to even see Glaucous Gull on the meadow. I doubt I ever will at this rate. Overall, it means that the roost offers far lower levels of satisfaction than it previously did, and it really has become of case of wondering whether it's worth getting numb fingers and eyestrain when the potential reward seems so low, despite paradoxically recording more Caspian Gulls than ever before. The "carrot" of an Iceland Gull, for example, no longer really exists in an Oxfordshire context - there just isn't a bird that has a reasonable chance of occurring a few times in a winter to spur you on. 

The counter to this, of course, is being able to appreciate that most inland patches don't get 60 bird-days of Caspian Gulls in a winter, so it's not like the fact that they've become more common has devalued them as a patch bird across the board. Port Meadow is clearly special in this regard. Still, there is only a limited amount of satisfaction to be gained from competing with other patches, e.g. in the Patchwork Challenge. I think the main motivator is usually competing against yourself - or perhaps if you're unusually antagonistic, against the other birders also working your patch...

I think that the "optimal" period in a patch birding lifetime, at least for me, lies somewhere in the middle - once you've seen most of the common species and acquired a level of familiarity and experience with the site, but before the law of diminishing returns hits and those new and exciting moments become few and far between. I'm sure that many people can just appreciate their patch for what it is but I don't think I can. Maybe I require moving around a bit to prevent my birding feeling stale and frustrating.

Anyway - I'll have a bit of a reset this weekend with a trip to Portland. Hoopoes and Blue-headed Wagtails await.