Saturday 21st January 2012: A cheeky little mosey in to Oxfordshire

So there was nout reported in Northants by Saturday morning. I'd been keeping an eye on Farmoor Res. near Oxford holding both Grey Phalarope and GN Diver. These would make a couple of pretty decent additions to the old year list plus hadn't seen a GN Diver for a while. Plus looking at Birdguides, the Oxforshire wintering Temminck's Stint was just 3 miles along the road at Rushy Common Nature Reserve, bonus! The journey consisted of a Red Kite flapping around a field by the M40 close to Middleton Stoney and a Raven cruising past along the A34.
Around 12:30 I was in the Car Park at Farmoor. As soon as I got to the resevoir edge it became pretty dam obvious where the Phalarope was, with a couple of peeps with cameras peering over the concrete edging of the resevoir about 50m along the perimeter path.
Low and behold there he was, so so close, no more than 6-7 feet away, closer than the Grafham bird I saw back last Autumn. He fed in exactly the same way, swimming along feeding upto roughly the same point before trundling back the same way. I watched it for a bit, getting a few snaps with my iphone, though for god sake yet again I which I had a nice big expensive SLR!!!
Another birder pointed out the GN Diver on the far side of F2. When I say far side, I mean far side. At 60x it was still a distant spec but you could just about make it out despite the strong wind.

Grey Phalarope. Farmoor Resevoir 21.01.12

Would have been great to get a decent view of the Diver but that would have meant a 2 mile plus walk around a very windswept Farmoor and wasn' feeling that, plus was keen to get back for Soccer Saturday of course!

So far so good then, 2 of the 3 birds done and dusted. So onto Rushy Common about 3 miles to the northwest. Didn't realise how many gravel pits there were round here. The reserve was along a rather shitty litttle lane, pothole central! Here was my kind of birding, get out of the car, set up the scope and view the bird no treck!
People there had lost it but I soon found it again on one of several little muddy spits in the NW corner of the lake. Was a little distant but you could see it well enough. Was pretty cool catching up with one of these in the middle of winter actually! It was in fact 1 of 2 in the UK this winter with one in Cambs too.
Rushy Common looked like a decent little spot, especially that NW corner, seemed pretty good for waders and wildfowl. There was all the usual ducks there with Wigeon, Gadwall, Teal, Mallard, 1 Shoveler, Pochards and Tufted Ducks.
From there it was home time. A very successful few hours!