Nighthawk

Sunny spells, 15°, breezy W.

Both out along the Bunk line this morning, Alan earlier and myself later.

I was halfway out and not seeing much when a message came thru of a Common Nighthawk in Wantage!

My first thought was “What’s a Common Nighthawk (an American relation of a Nightjar and a mega rarity in the UK) doing in Oxfordshire?

Anyway I immediately about turned and phoned Loren to say we were off to Wantage and made it back home as fast as possible. And by around midday we were off.

We arrived onsite fairly quickly and joined a small band of local Oxon birders already present and surprised to see the Nighthawk perched atop a fence in plain view.

This species is crepuscular/nocturnal and rests up during the day and its cryptic plumage helps to camouflage it on trees, logs etc.

Ian Lewington had earlier received a call from a Wantage resident regarding a bird sat on his garden fence that was believed to be a Nightjar but on viewing it, Lew realised it was a rare American cousin and put the news out. A first record for Oxfordshire.

A couple of Oxon birders had also organised a collection bucket for birders to donate to the resident’s preferred charity as he allowed people to view the bird in his garden.

As time wore on more birders started to arrive so after approx. and hour, we decided to leave to make room for the crowds that will inevitably turn up later.

 

Redstart plus Butterflies & Dragons

A sunshiny day, 30°, light NW.

A surprise day on Lollingdon hill today, initially a male Common Redstart had turned up but keeping to the top hedge and only seen briefly a few times.

Next, a butterfly landed on some bramble just in front of me and stayed long enough to ID it as a White-letter Hairstreak. What it was doing there? I don’t know but an unusual record for this species with only 3 records in the last 20 years. It flew up into the tree canopy and I did not see it again.

While searching for the WLH, I came across a Silver-washed Fritillary, another scarce butterfly for the area. This one very active and soon disappeared and sadly no photos of either.

A Little Owl also seen and 18 Red Kite seen thermalling out at Lollingdon. Also a few Swift, Swallow and House Martin feeding overhead.

Dragonflies: Beautiful Demoiselle, Banded Demoiselle, Southern Hawker, Brown Hawker & Common Darter.

Butterflies: Large Skipper, Small Skipper, Essex Skipper, Brimstone, Large White, Small White, White-letter Hairstreak, Common Blue, Painted Lady, Red Admiral, Small Tortoiseshell, Comma, Silver-washed Fritillary, Speckled Wood, Marbled White, Gatekeeper, Meadow Brown, Ringlet & Small Heath.

Beautiful Demoiselle

Melodious Warbler

Melodious Warbler

Friday 28th May 2021: Cloudy with some very light rain, 15°, light ENE.

I took one of my usual walks out to Lollingdon Hill, nothing much to shout about apart from 3 Goldcrest.

As I stood in one of my usual spots I heard an unfamiliar song coming from the hedgerow up the track.

The bird was in deep cover but singing regularly. I manage to record the song and messaged it to a couple of local birders.

In the mean time I had only seen the bird very briefly and on those views it suggested an Acrocephalus or Hippolais Warbler.

I then checked the song on my phone app and came up with Melodious Warbler at roughly the same time I got a message back concurring with that ID.

I then phoned a few local birders and requested they attend to confirm ID.

Later the bird started to show a little better and the ID was clinched.

A discussion later was then had about releasing the news generally. However, there is nowhere to park out at Lollingdon, all the adjacent fields have crops and it is a single track, private, badly maintained lane with either ditches or raised banks. Plus there has been building work going on out there and heavy vehicles as well as farm vehicles are up and down the lane.

We also have a good relationship with local landowners and residents and did not want to jeopardise that for obvious reasons.

The bird was not seen or heard after 16:30 that day and not since despite searching.

Subsequently I made the decision not to release the news until now.

The following are a series of photographs taken by four of those present.

Alan Dawson, Ian Lewington, Roger Wyatt, Geoff Wyatt, Tony Williams and Myself.

Great Bustard

Cloudy with frequent light rain, 7°, light SE.

A trip out to Letcombe Regis this morning to see a Great Bustard.

The bird has been frequenting an area in Letcombe Regis since the weekend and may have been present in South Oxfordshire for a couple of months.

The bird is from the “Great Bustard re-introduction Project” in Wiltshire.

Alan visited the site earlier in the week and have included one of his photos here.

Whatever its provenance, still a good bird to see.

Bird Race 1992

Article featured in UKAEA Harwell News.

On 9 May 1992 across the country, Birders and twitchers were likely to be spotted behaving in a frantic manner racing around trying to notch up as many species as possible. It was the day of the nationwide “County Bird Race” sponsored by “In Focus”. The idea was that teams of four Birders attempted to find and identify as many species as possible in 24 hours within their county. That year, two members of AEA Technology, Group member Peter Pool and Paul Chandler were competing in the event. Peter was a design draughtsman at Culham and was a veteran of the event whilst for Paul the computer consultant with ETSU it was to be his first time. Both were experienced birdwatchers, Peter had been very involved with the RSPB for a long time and Paul was a self-confessed twitcher also very much into ‘green’ issues. With two other team members, Peter and Paul were to compete against three other teams in Oxfordshire. The goal was to find 100 species. The current county record was 99 species. The main aim of the event was to raise money for two charities, the county’s wildlife trust BBONT, and the International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP)’s Spanish Steppes Appeal (to save the Great Bustard). The previous year, 100 teams took part and raised £10,000 in cash for the ICBP. 

Back in Time – Chumming for Black Grouse

On the 6th March 1993 our team took a late winter trip to Scotland on a twitch for a Ross’s Gull near Inverness but unfortunately it was not there after the long journey north (fortunately I had seen one in 88 in Devon). We hired a car from a local dealer where my daughter then worked, a Ford Granada automatic a bit of a novelty so we all had a drive of it during our trip. Geoff and Roger Wyatt, Martin Hallam, Justin Taylor and myself all went north and decided to make a week end of it so after dipping the gull we continued up to Grantown on Spey to clean up on some Scottish specialities.

We arrived at Grantown and booked in to a B&B and then went to one of the local hotels to get some food and a few beers, as luck would have it there was a two piece band performing in the hotel that night complete with a drum machine, guitar etc, doing covers of pop songs from the 60’s and 70’s which fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your view) we all knew the words to so as the beer flowed so did our vocal prowess led by our choirmaster Geoff.

We even complimented vocally the drum machine intros and sang along with just about every track they played and at one point the guitarist broke a string but we managed to fill in on the song until the guitar was restrung. Come the end of the night we even got applause from band themselves and some of the audience and needless to say we were well oiled!

This was one of several trips to Scotland we made for various rarities and we must admit that apart from the birds (‘cos they are in our notebooks) the memories of the rest of the trips tend to be rather vague and especially as influenced by alcohol. On one trip we camped in Grantown cemetery for a night as we could not get a B&B, luckily it was not Halloween that night.

OK, so the following morning we are out early, all with various degrees of a hangover and Roger being particularly worse for wear. One of our target species was Black Grouse as Justin had not seen them before so we started a tour of potential sites. Every now and again we would have to stop for one of the passengers to get out of the car and regurgitate some of the previous nights intake, now at one point Roger said “stop the car”, he opened the passenger door and immediately regurgitate and at that point two male Black Grouse flew from right to left over the car that proves the point that “chumming” and for Black Grouse inland can work.

Some irony here also as in the back seat Martin was sat on one side of the car and saw them, me sat on the other side saw them but Justin sat in the middle missed them and he was the one who needed to see them! However we did see some more on the trip so Justin did get his Black Grouse.

Overall we had a pretty good week end with Crested Tit, Scottish Crossbill, Golden Eagle, Ptarmigan, Red Grouse, Black Grouse, Snow Bunting, Iceland Gull, Goshawk, Hen Harrier, Capercallie, thousands of Pink-footed Geese, a Snow Goose, many Common Eider and a several Red Squirrel and thanks to Geoff Wyatt for his input on this one.

Back in Time – St Abbs Head

25th May 1993 saw 4 of us; Ian Lewington, Martin Hallam, Graham Etherington and I make for St Abbs Head in the borders for a Marmora’s Warbler.

If I recall it was a bit of a white knuckle ride as Graham was driving and he had a rather sporty looking car and I’m sure he was in contention for an F1 spot, racing along small country lanes to get us there.

Still we made St Abbs shortly after dawn and found the Marmora’s still present, it was a 1st summer male and a beauty of a bird.

St Abbs head is a national nature reserve on the coast of Berwickshire in the Scottish borders and a very scenic spot, also the home to a large seabird colony that nest on the cliffs that are part of the reserve, a place I would certainly visit again.

After taking our fill of the Marmora’s Warbler we decided to head back south and on the way back we decided to drop in on the Farne Islands as we had heard that “Elsie” the Lesser Crested Tern had been seen recently among the Tern colony there.

We got to Seahouses and managed to take the boat over to Inner Farne, the weather was good and the sea relatively calm. On arrival we spoke to one of the wardens present who said that Elsie had not been seen for a few days, none the less we would still make the most of a visit to these beautiful islands and take in the wealth of seabird’s present breeding on and around the islands.

We wound our way around the various footpaths on the island and constantly being attacked by Arctic Terns that were breeding close to the paths, Martin actually ended up with a small cut on his forehead from a Tern that made contact!

Whilst getting our fill of all the Terns and Auks that were around and scanning some of the coastal rocks I noticed a group of around 50 Sandwich Terns so I promptly set up my ‘scope and went through them one by one and to my surprise found one with a big orangey-yellow bill, that was Elsie!

I called the others over and we sat and enjoyed our 2nd tick of the day.

We stayed on the island a little longer to enjoy the many Terns and Auks present around and take in the atmosphere of the Farne islands.

A very satisfying day, in fact May 1993 was a superb month for rarities with a White Stork at Sidlesham, (Red-headed Bunting) Ipswich, Citrine Wagtail Fleet, Oriental Pratincole Gimmingham, the Marmora’s and Elsie, Great Reed Warbler Elmley, Sardinian Warbler Dungeness, and a Pacific Swift to round off the month at Cley, also other trips to Norfolk, Suffolk, Portland and the Oxon birdrace (107 species), almost 200 species seen that month and many miles driven!