The Standlake Birder

Sedge Warbler, Standlake Common 2020 April and May are my two favourite months of the year. Spring in the garden after the winter rest is always an exciting time with a wonderful sequence of fresh bloom bringing a sense of new life and renewal to the garden. It’s also the best time of year for bird photography. While the more leisurely autumn passage probably holds more promise in terms of rarities, the shorter spring passage has the big photographic advantage of the birds being in summer plumage. This year, of course, has been very different. The national emergency we all face has, by necessity, limited our travel to a very great extent. Normally at this time of year I would be watching the bird report services and planning day trips of anything up to several hundred miles. To be honest I thought that I would find the limitation of local spring birding very tough but in fact I’ve actually enjoyed not having the pressure to twitch and instead just focusing on local birds clo...

Goldfinch I consider myself to be very very fortunate in these troubled times. Firstly, because I have a large garden in which I can escape and loose myself mentally. Secondly, because I have both Standlake Common and Dix Pit local to me for my permitted daily walk.  One benefit of the lockdown has certainly been to make me appreciate the little things in life that I would normally take for granted. Seeing Wheatear on passage at their Oxfordshire hot spots in spring is a case in point. We were on our early morning walk around Dix last week when we got to the Devil’s Quoits and I said to Carolyn “this is about my only chance of seeing a Wheatear this spring”. As we walked around the stone circle I scanned the ground and stones with my bins with no luck. As we were about to leave the stones Carolyn said “what’s that little bird there?” and sure enough there was a Wheatear sitting on the stones. Cue childish excitement on my part! I have to say that it is not unusual for Ca...

Takahe I absolutely loved doing Badgers five day bird photo challenge on Facebook, lots of thanks to my mate Nick for nominating me, so here is the complete set of posts together with some extra pics. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did putting the five posts together! My first bird is the South Island Takahe (Porphyrio hochstetteri) from New Zealand. The flightless Takahe is the largest living member of the rail family and was thought at one time to be extinct. It was first discovered by Europeans in 1847, but after the final bird was captured in 1898 no more were found and the bird was officially considered extinct.  Fast forward fifty years to 1948 to meet Dr Geoffrey Orbell a keen naturalist and hiker who suspected the Takahe might still survive. On an expedition on 20 th November 1948 with three fellow naturalists to the remote Murchison mountains near Lake Te Anau he discovered unfamiliar footprints and heard a strange bird call. They followed the footpr...