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| American Golden Plover, Otmoor |
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| 2cy Red-footed Falcon at Standlake in May 2025 - perhaps here is a good place to tell the story of this twitch. Ben and I were in the middle of teaching the undergraduate field course when Simon Myers refound the bird. We had only 90 minutes to connect whilst the students were being lectured by someone else, so we left Wytham immediately and had a bit of a hair-raising drive down the A420 in one of the hire minibuses. We arrived at the Maybush pub about 25 minutes after Simon's initial text, left the minibus in the car park and then began running along the Thames tow path towards the bird. Ben tripped and got left behind almost immediately - "you go on!" so I ran the mile or so towards where Simon was and connected. I began taking pics and after a few minutes Ben arrived, got onto the bird, and almost immediately had to leave again to be back in time for the students! Amazingly, no one noticed that we had gone... |
It was therefore absolutely typical that shortly after my arrival at Portland Bird Observatory last weekend, a message came through on the Oxon WhatsApp group about a possible American Golden Plover at Otmoor, which had then been reported on Birdguides. At the time, I was in the process of dipping Bonaparte's Gull on the Fleet, after a relatively birdless morning at the Obs - so I wasn't best pleased. The timeline for this bird's discovery was rather unclear, and frustrating to follow from afar. Apparently it had first been seen early on Saturday morning by some photographers, but only recognised as a European Golden Plover (indeed, there is at least one eBird checklist which has been retrospectively edited). The identification was then questioned when a photo of this bird was posted to Facebook, but apparently those in the hide had been deliberating all morning, with comments about a Golden Plover sp. separately posted to the Oxon Birding Blog.
Quite why it took until lunchtime for a report to make it onto Birdguides is baffling, and illustrates some of the issues with bird reporting in this county. Regardless, there were still further questions over the identification, which were only resolved mid-afternoon, where additional photos from Steve Sansom seemed to confirm what was (in my opinion) pretty obvious from the beginning.
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| The Fleet just west of Bridging Camp - my view for the Bonaparte's dip and AGP message |
The combination of a poor birding day at Portland, dipping the Bonaparte's and the American Golden Plover news made the rest of the weekend rather challenging for me. Indeed, I only made it through by venting about the bird, identification and state of county listing to everyone else at the Obs, who were completely sick of hearing about it by the end. At least my frustration has inspired this blog post!
Conditions were slightly better on Sunday, with a clear arrival of birds overnight. With several ringers already working the garden nets, I chose to go up to the West Cliffs to try some vismigging in the light northeasterly wind. There was very little overhead, with just a single Tree Pipit, an unseasonal flock of nine Siskin, a Dunlin and a few hirundines through north. It was pleasing to see the bushes come alive with birds as I sat there, with first a nice male Whinchat perching up on the fenceline, before several Redstarts began hopping out of the bushes. As I walked back down to the Obs, more and more Redstarts appeared - classic spring birding on Portland! Sadly I failed to locate any Pied Flycatchers myself, and had to fall back on twitching one at Reap Lane in the evening.
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| New portable vismig station - very pleased with the Dodotronic parabolic plus mini tripod stand thing |
Monday morning dawned clear and cold in a stiff easterly. I tried a short seawatch without seeing much except a flock of Bar-tailed Godwits going up the channel. At 7am there was still no report of the American Golden Plover, so I impatiently messaged the WhatsApp group. Max Buckley replied that he was 20 minutes away from the hide. Cue 20 minutes of fidgeting before finally came the good news that I had been waiting for – it was still present!
I finished up at the Obs and set off on the three-hour drive to Otmoor, which thankfully went by without any delays. I pulled up at the car park and began walking briskly towards the Wetland Watch hide - no scope, as I thought that would slow me down too much. I met Geoff Wyatt coming the other way, who informed me that the bird appeared fairly settled. I hurried on, getting more and more tense - in fact, it's been a while since I've felt quite so neurotic on a twitch!
I practically burst into the hide, where a few people were apparently watching the American Golden Plover. I didn't know any of them and I assumed none were local. Despite some mumblings that it was showing, there was a total lack of directions. Scanning the shoreline with bins, I couldn't immediately see it - clearly it was much more distant than I thought, and I was cursing not bringing the scope. Still no directions from the masses. Panic. Could this situation get any more comical? I spotted something pale moving in the grass on the far side of the pool. "Is that blob it? IS THAT IT?!" - "yes". I took a couple of photos to try and confirm. No offer from anybody to look through their scopes.
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| View from the hide - the AGP was initially distant, on the shore underneath that group of small trees, before moving left to that central spit at the back of the main pool |
Eventually I pieced together some decent views, mostly by looking down my camera viewfinder and magnifying as much as possible. I was struck both by the colour and jizz of the bird - never appearing dumpy like a European Golden Plover. The cap was so dark, producing a really distinctive face pattern, and the flanks were grey and dusky. The primary projection was obvious, as was its leggy gait. What a classic bird, brilliant.
People were coming and going from the hide, and after about an hour I was left with the bird to myself. It had barely moved, feeding in the same small area of grass (and even sleeping for short periods), but then for some reason it got spooked and flew a short distance to a muddy spit that was a bit closer to the hide. I was able to get some acceptable record shots by videoing the bird, extracting some of the least blurred stills and then processing these videocaptures.
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| This was the only stills shot that I kept - much lower apparent resolution than the videocapture method |
I think I struck lucky with this bird as it was gone the following morning! Adam, and others, had urged me to just twitch it from Portland (either cutting short my stay or doing the ridiculous and going to and from the Obs). I'm glad I didn't, but I think this was clearly cutting it fine for a crucial county bird. This is only the third record, with the other two being from Port Meadow - sadly well before my time. The American Golden Plover was also a new bird for our highest Oxfordshire lister, bringing him to 280, which prompted me to think a bit about the state of county birding.
2026 seems to be following a similar trajectory to 2025 in terms of Oxfordshire punching above its weight for rare birds – so far we’ve already had Ring-billed Gull, American Wigeon, Green-winged Teal, American Golden Plover and Black-winged Stilt (latter four all on Otmoor, and two found by me!) as well as a range of county scarcities like Long-tailed Duck, Glossy Ibis and Tundra Bean Goose. Combined with some really engaging patch birding, with the Port Meadow floods remaining well into April (Kittiwake, Little Gull, Whimbrel, Bar-tailed Godwit, Wood Sandpiper, Nightingale and Osprey all in the last couple of months), this has meant that my enthusiasm for local birding is possibly at an all time high. A complete contrast to how I felt at this time last year!
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| Black-winged Stilt on Otmoor - great find by Max, and my second in the county |
I’ve already added three new county ticks, bringing me to 231, and I’ve been thinking about whether I could reach 240 before my contract potentially ends in September 2027. There is only one annually occurring, regular species that I still need to see – Curlew Sandpiper (unless you count Hoopoe which seems to occur every year in gardens but is basically never twitchable). Other low-hanging fruit would be Red-breasted Merganser, Red-necked Grebe, any Diver other than Great Northern Diver and any Shrike. Glaucous Gull, meanwhile, seems like a bit of a pipe dream at this point.
Ben Sheldon pointed out that he’s managed to see the same number of species as me in five years as I have in ten, so I think I’m trending below average in terms of how long I’ve been birding in the county. A few things I won’t get back, but I feel like any new additions are equally as likely to be new birds for the county than they are old blockers. Really looking forward to seeing what turns up next.
