Grey Phalarope & GNDs

On Saturday (28/11), with the weather looking clear & bright early on, I decided to drive the 35 minutes or so to Farmoor Reservoir close to Oxford, to enjoy a favourite of mine, a Grey Phalarope that had thankfully hung around all week. With the addition of the long-staying Red Necked Grebe on offer too, it was well worth a look.

I arrived at pretty much dead on 8am and within a minute of leaving the car, I was enjoying fabulous close-range views of the Grey Phalarope in the NE corner of F2. It was, as expected very busy, constantly on the move feeding mainly on small food items, however did catch itself a sizable stickleback at one point. After a while, it disappeared towards the causeway so I decided to walk a circuit of F2 on what was a very cold but bright morning

  

The walk produced very little of note other than a single Little Egret, however the light was nice...

It had now clouded over and had become flipping freezing! A scan for the Red-Necked Grebe on F2 was fruitless, however I soon picked it out distantly in the centre of F1, chilling with a handful of Great Crested Grebes. Before I left I also had one last fix of the Phalarope, this time mid-way along the causeway on the F2 side. Again it showed amazingly well despite the constant harassment from photographers, pretty much getting in the water with it! It was then time to head home for a cuppa & a bit of Soccer Saturday.

Yesterday, (Sunday 29/11) I joined up with Gareth Blockley & Dan Watson for a bit of Warwickshire birding, a new experience for me! Late morning, in cloudy & insanely windy conditions, we gave Draycote Water a go, surprisingly my first ever visit there. Towards Toft Bay, A Great Northern Diver was on show distantly and both drake & Redhead Goosander were seeing flying about.

A walk the other way towards Rainbow Corner didn't produce a great deal of variety, however we managed to get some excellent views of the other 2 Great Northern Divers, both juveniles that have been present for at least a week or so.

  





















The finished the day at Dan's patch, Weston Lane Landfill site between Leamington & Coventry for a bit of 'gulling'. Despite our best efforts, we failed to get onto anything decent but will certainly be back! Best birds were a brief 1st-winter Yellow-Legged Gull, 2-3 Green Sandpiper, tonnes of Raven around the tip & a flyover Redpoll sp. 

Danish wanderer

A visit to Grimsbury Reservoir during my lunch break on Monday (23/11) actually produced something of interest!

Amongst the usual small gathering of Black Headed Gulls, I was pleased to catch up with the Danish-ringed bird (VK40) Gareth had previously discovered on the 5th November. A really interesting record! I also had the first Goosanders (2 females) of the winter and a flyover Redpoll sp.

Northants wander about

On Sunday (22/11) I took Gareth for a small tour of some Northants sites with the hope as always of finding something good.

A stroll around Summer Leys was planned first, but we did first pop into Delapre Lake (or Hardingstone GP if you prefer), always worth a check. Nothing really of note though other than the usual gathering of Gadwall, a couple of Wigeon and a few flyover Siskin.

Summer Leys was cold but bathed in a fair bit of sunshine on arrival. Best birds initially were a female Stonechat around the scrape, a squealing Water Rail, an Egyptian Goose & my first Goldeneye, a drake on the main lake.

Moving to the other side of the reserve, the Great White Egret was to the right of Paul Britten Hide, with shocking views only, through thick scrub. A Little Egret was also nearby and several Siskin were in the area. A walk further round to Mary's Lake produced 4 Pintail, always a nice bird to see in Northants, with their appearance often rather sporadic.

Next, we moved on to the reserve end of Pitsford Reservoir, north of the causeway. Scanning from the feeding station produced a further 2 Great White Egrets around the mouth of the Walgrave Bay. We walked down to the Scaldwell Bay to have a closer look and to try out the new hide which I have to say is pretty impressive.

Birds from here or very closeby included Green Sandpiper, Redshank, Shelduck, 5 Pintail and excellent numbers of Wigeon & Gadwall. A Fox was wandering along the far shore of the bay, as were a couple of foraging Muntjacks. A flock of 9 Goldeneye appeared on the walk back, while the feeding station produced the usual Tree Sparrows & Yellowhammers.

A quick visit to the dam end, more for sustenance then anything lead to a very nice Bacon, Brie & cranberry baguette (with an unexpected, yet welcome portion of wedges!) from the country park cafe. A scan from the dam was fruitless, so we finished the last bit of daylight at Blueberry Farm, near Maidwell for a dart at Short Eared Owls.
Turned out to be a really good visit, particularly as good mates David James & Simon Hales were on site. In between the chat and laughs, a single Short Eared Owl (Dave James's video below) showed well at times, together with a Barn Owl and a fly-through Peregrine. Great end to the day.

Severn seabirds

At the end of last week, myself, Gareth Blockley & Dan Watson had been plotting a trip out somewhere. With westerly gales forecast for Saturday night and Sunday morning, Gareth's idea to head to Severn Beach seemed a shrewd move, with a very good chance of particularly Leach's Petrel and Skuas.

So, first thing on Sunday 15/11, we set off, stopping briefly at Gloucester services en-route. Twitter provided encouraging news of a Leach's already having gone past Severn Beach, excellent! On we went, getting good views of a Merlin unexpectedly zipping across the M5 near Tewkesbury. We arrived at the little village of Severn Beach in heavy winds (around 50mph according to the forecast).

We got our stuff together, before purposefully making our way to the shoreline, full of optimism! There were plenty of birders about and we soon got news of a Leach's a short way further east along the seawall, close to the bridge. It wasn't long before I got onto it busily flying around low to the choppy Severn waters. My first Leach's Petrel...wey hey!! After a couple of minutes it began to come closer...& closer...& closer, to the point where at speed, it shot over the heads of the several assembled birders and crashed into scrub the other side of the sea wall. Oh bugger!

Dan and another guy, a mate of Gareth's, headed into the bushes to take a look. After a few minutes, Gareth's mate re-appeared with the bird safely in his hand. He found it a little stunned sitting on the ground under the bushes. It was unsurprisingly a little shaken, but appeared undamaged and importantly alive. Pheww!

After a short bit of deliberation, the bird was passed onto local birder Paul Bowerman, who has plenty of previous experience in taking care of exhausted seabirds, living where he does. Into a shoe box it went and away to his house. It turned out the bird was 10 grams under weight, so was to be fed-up and hopefully released the following day.

So, on with the birding! The wind was pretty savage and soon sent my scope/tripod flying, much to my horror. Thankfully it was alright, but annoyingly has caused slight damage to the eyepiece...f**k it! 

We set ourselves up under the seawall, largely out of the wind and began scouring the water. Increasing numbers of Kittiwakes were gathering offshore, totalling as many as 80 birds. Streams of Curlews headed west fairly regularly, as well as a few Turnstone. An adult Med Gull then flew around for a bit too.

A little while later, we caught sight of a bird flying east not too far offshore, probably just a Teal I thought before getting my bins on it. At the same moment my mind told me "that's no Teal", Dan shouted Black Guillemot! Flipping hell it was too, turning as it approached the bridge, showing it's frosty plumage & big white wing panels. How mega was that! Such an unusual bird for the area (later we found to be the 3rd ever!). While the numbers of birds weren't massive, the quality was pretty damn good! The boys were buzzing for it!

We took a wander under the bridge and a little further east towards Northwick Warth in an attempt to re-locate the Guillemot. But no luck, just tonnes of Wigeon and another lone Kittiwake.

With the tide swiftly heading out, our chances of further seabirds was probably diminishing, however we decided to give it one more go, while at the same time having a chat with the locals, a real friendly bunch. This turned out to be a good move as our second Leach's Petrel appeared a fair way offshore. It came a bit closer and we watched it darting around for a bit, ducking and weaving away from a local Herring Gull on it's tail!

A few minutes later it, or probably another was picked up very distantly over the water, this time with a good 20 big gulls chasing it. This one was probably doomed unfortunately! A lone Kittiwake then performed very well (below) very close to the seawall 

We were just about to head off to try somewhere different when Dan picked up a distant Skua. It quickly became clear it was a Great Skua, slowly but surely coming closer. An adult, it was soon joined by a second bird, a first year. They ended up flying right over our heads and off inland roughly south-east. Cool!

Furthermore, a juvenile Gannet headed strongly up river soon after. It was all happening! We waited a little longer, but nothing further happened. So, we drove the short distance east to Northwick Warth and Pilning Wetlands.

Here, there were tonnes of Wigeon along the river shore, as well as a handful of Black Tailed Godwit, Curlews, Redshanks, Dunlin and a single Oystercatcher. A large boggy area between the river and Pilning wetland held lots of Pipits and Pied Wagtails. Sadly we couldn't track down the hoped for Water Pipit, however there was a single Rock Pipit in with the numerous Meadows. A pair of Stonechat were also seen nearby.

The main purpose of our visit here was the Glossy Ibis, present for a little while now. We got on the bird fairly promptly, watching it strutting about, actively feeding. This was in fact only my third Glossy so nice to see! 

To be honest, that was pretty much it for the day. We had a bit of a look around nearby Aust Warth in the hope we may encounter a late after Short Eared Owl, however it was just too windy. But what a flipping quality day it'd had been!

Hard work!

Recent weeks have been rather quiet on the bird front close to home. We've been in that in-between stage between autumn and winter. The abnormally mild weather for this time of year is also maybe also having an impact.

Grimsbury Reservoir has certainly become very hard work and new birds for the year have rather dried up! There has been the odd thing to keep us interested though, the best of which being a lovely 1st winter/female Black Redstart (below) around the water treatment works, found by Gareth on Saturday 31/10.

The gulls there have been a decent lure with good numbers of 'biguns' regularly about. These have brought several sightings of Yellow-Legged Gulls (below), as well as a nice 2nd-winter Mediterranean Gull in the early evening gloom of Saturday 07/11.

I haven't been out birding too much elsewhere, but Gareth & I did make pay visits to Boddington Reservoir, Borough Hill & Daventry Reservoir on Sunday 25/10 without finding too much of note. Boddington held a Willow Tit in the usual areas around Byfield Pool. Borough Hill was pretty devoid of birds full stop, while Daventry Reservoir was full of birds but not too many scarcities. The best being 2 Green Sandpiper, 2 female Goosander & around 150 Golden Plovers.

It shouldn't be too long nowbefore the weather turns more wintery, which in turn will hopefully spice up the local birding a little!