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| Sedge Warbler |
I’ve spent more time birding in Standlake and its environs during the lockdown that I care to remember. So with the partial easing of the lockdown rules I was queuing to get into the reopened Farmoor reservoir at 10:00 last Wednesday. It is getting a bit late for Yellow Wagtails at Farmoor and a quick look at their favoured spot on the grass by the waterworks produced no sightings so I set off down the causeway. I soon noticed 3 waders making their way towards me, summer plumage Dunlins, a common enough bird in the UK but such a relief to see something different! In common with many waders on passage this time of year they are on route northwards where they breed and take advantage of the long hours of daylight.
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| Dunlin |
There are actually a rather staggering 11 races of Dunlin world-wide with different races having different breeding locations.We have one race of Dunlins breeding in the UK in small numbers in Scotland and western parts of England and Wales. This race also breeds in Iceland, south-east Greenland and southern Norway before migrating to West Africa for the winter. A second race breeds in Greenland and is only a passage migrant to the UK. They visit our shores during spring and autumn to refuel and they also overwinter in West Africa The third race of Dunlins to visit the UK breeds in northern Scandinavia and Russia. This is our commonest race with up to 700,000 wintering on the east coast.
I met fellow Oxon birder Ewan on the causeway and enquired if any Grasshopper Warblers, the one “common” Warbler that is almost impossible to get around Standlake, were still reeling on the banks of the Thames. He said he had not heard or seen one for the past two weeks or so. They tend to stop reeling while attending to their first brood and then start up again for a short while before usually settling down for a second brood. Ewan said he was off to see a very showy Sedge Warbler he had found on the Thames so I accompanied him. Sure enough this little beauty was putting on a great performance on its favoured exposed perch providing us with excellent photographic opportunities. I returned to the car park via the causeway and had a rather distant view of a Yellow Wagtail – a year tick for me.
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| Sedge Warbler |
On Thursday morning I returned to Farmoor and, erroneously as it turned out, decided to give the causeway an initial miss and instead walked around f1 and back down to the river on the off chance of a grasshopper warbler. I didn’t find one and just as I was heading back to the main reservoir Mark called me to say that Ewan had found a summer plumage Curlew Sandpiper on the causeway, a rare bird for Oxfordshire and even rarer in summer plumage. Rats – wrong choice to go round F1! I rushed up to the causeway to find Mark and Ewan looking for the bird which had been flushed. After some time I’m pretty sure I had a very brief distant view of it on the causeway before it was again flushed by a walker but I would not stake my life on it.
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| Reed Warbler |
On Friday morning I went to Otmoor and had a very pleasant early morning walk along the bridleway to Noke, again searching for Grasshopper Warblers with no luck. I also tried July’s meadow where they are sometimes seen or heard but could not find one. The day before a very rare bird for Oxfordshire, a female red-footed Falcon had been found only 8 miles north of Otmoor on some railway siding works. I have seen these stunning Falcons before in the UK but not locally so decided to finish my morning birding trying to see it. After a few false starts trying to find the right location I found 6 birders including Lee Evans watching the Falcon high up and distant hawking for insects – an Oxon and year tick for me. The distance and heat haze negated any real chance of photography so I watched it with my bins for a while, marvelling at its total mastery of the air.
I avoiding any birding at the weekend figuring that, with the slight easing of the lockdown, it would be very busy and spent the weekend gardening and chilling out at home.
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| Sanderling |
On Monday I once again went to Farmoor and this time was greeted by 3 Sanderling, another year tick for me, and a Ringed Plover on the causeway. The Sanderling were in various stages of moult into summer plumage and were, for what are normally very confiding birds, very nervous taking flight every time a walker or vehicle passed them on the causeway. Sanderling are normally very hyperactive reminding me of clockwork toys. On the coast they dart to and fro feeding on the waters edge as the waves come in and out, always seeming to just miss the oncoming wave and staying dry. These three birds were unusually inactive and eventually departed, presumably to continue their migration to their northerly breeding grounds.
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| Hoopoe |
Well who ever said that birding in Oxfordshire is dull! After the first Oxon mega of the week blow me if a second wasn’t found on Monday, a Hoopoe that had strayed off course and was busy feeding on the lawns of a housing estate in north Oxfordshire. I’ve seen them before in the UK and indeed saw a lot of what were presumably european birds overwintering in Kenya last year but this would be another Oxon first for me. Hoopoe are truly exotic looking birds with a large very punky crest that is raised when they are alarmed and a low curved beak which is used to probe the grass for insects. My good birding mate Nick, read his excellent blog here, was working close by on Monday and went to see it afterwork. He kindly offered to check on his way to work on Tuesday and let me know if it was still there. I got his message that it was bright and early, walked the dogs and then set off. On arrival there were a few Oxon birders and Lee Evans present who said the bird had last been seen on its favoured lawn an hour ago. I was about to go and grab a coffee from my thermos in the car when a shout of “its back” went up and there it was in all its exoticness probing the lawn for insects. I could not but help wondering if this just might be one of the birds we saw overwintering in Kenya – almost certainly not but I still enjoyed day dreaming the thought. It was quite a nervous bird and easily disturbed. After a few minutes it flew off before giving the occasional view on roof tops and under a car for the next hour or so. Now I must admit that housing estate birding isn’t really my cup of tea, I always feel awkward with a camera and bins in this environment, but everyone was well very behaved and the locals were very friendly and welcoming. How disappointing was it then to hear that some “birders” were driving on to the estate and using their cars as hides the next morning? I was actually pleased that the bird had done a bunk, as I’m sure the residents now were.
The current Coronavirus pandemic has brought back bad memories of my own personal experience with SARS, its sister virus. Way back some 18 years ago I was managing director of Oxford Instrument’s Semiconductor division based down in Somerset. Much of our business was in Asia and I hence had many business trips to China, Japan, Korean and Taiwan. I returned from one particularly arduous trip to China over a weekend and drove down to Somerset for a week based in the UK bright and early on the Monday morning. That night I felt a bit rough and, by midday the next day, I was pretty much non-functional workwise with a fever and aches and pains so drove home. When I got home I decided that I felt sufficiently rough that a visit to the doctor was in order. Now, as it subsequently turned out, I had been in very close proximity to what eventually was identified as the source of a second SARS outbreak in China. This resulted from poor control procedures in a university medical department where they were experimenting with the live virus and, very sadly, led to a number of staff fatalities. I told the doctor I had been in China and she determined I ticked all the boxes for SAR’s, i.e fever with temperature above a number I can’t remember that was high, difficulty breathing and a depressed blood Oxygen content. Cue the rapid arrival of an ambulance which whipped me off to the infectious diseases isolation ward at the Churchill hospital! I don’t remember much about the first couple of days as I felt so rough that I spent most of them asleep apart from being wheeled off for chest x-rays and being regualrly checked by the fantastic NHS staff. After 2 or 3 days of high fever and extra Oxygen I started to feel a lot better and felt I was over the worst of it.
There were a couple of rather black comedy incidents that I remember from my stay. I had a private isolation room to myself which overlooked some gardens. I woke up at some point and noticed that two people, a man and a woman, were in the gardens staring through the window at me. I remember thinking that the man bore a startling resemblance to Bargain Hunt host David Dickinson of “cheap as chips” and spray on orange tan fame. Now your mind does strange things in such circumstances and I thought they might be reporters from the Sun or some other rag trying to get a picture of the poor SARS patient! I subsequently found out that the truth was equally odd, it was an ICU consultant and nurse checking if the facilities in my room would allow ICU treatment if needed without having to move me! After 4 or 5 days I was feeling much better and was pretty sure I was going to be OK. Up to this point the NHS staff in attendance had been wearing full PPE but then an orderly came in with my lunch tray without PPE. Great I thought, I must be OK. No, sadly the orderly did not speak English, thelanguage of the dire warning signs on my door!
After 10 days or so I was discharged to isolate at home and after a couple of weeks I was fully recovered and allowed back to work. I don’t remember swab tests being done at the hospital but I had to go back after a month or so for antibody blood tests which would have been definitive re the bug that laid me low. I was told that they would write to me in a couple of weeks with the results. I never received the results and, very strangely looking back now, I never chased them, I think because I just wanted to forget the whole horrible experience and get back to normal asap. So I can’t say for 100% sure I had SARS although that’s what the doctors at the Churchill thought it was! Needless to say that my next trip to China was a rather nervous one!
Before the corona virus outbreak Carolyn and I had travel plans for a holiday in Japan and a return trip to wonderful Kenya. Neither of us can imagine getting on a plane anytime soon so it looks as though these plans are on hold for at least 1 or 2 years. We hence thought some cheer-up presents were in order. In my case this is a new camera. The recently released mark 3 version of my Cannon 1Dx has had rave reviews, especially its high ISO speed and sophisticated autofocus performance, key attributes for UK wildlife photography. It is effectively a hybrid mirror/mirrorless camera as it can be run completely silently in so called live mode with the mirror locked up.
My new toy arrived today so I paid a quick visit to Farmoor for a play. Now I should probably should have at least glanced at the manual before I went but why change the habits of a lifetime at 64! Luckily there was enough similarity with my 1DX mark 1 to allow me to fire off a few test shots. It was immediately obvious how fast the camera was, shooting at 18 frames/second there was no buffering at all as it wrote to the ultra-fast SSD card. The combination of this speed, it also has a very fast 1/8000 sec shutter speed at the top end, and its high ISO performance is going to give me even less excuse for screwing up in flight shots. I took some shots of a Reed Bunting at various ISO speeds and, while there was some inevitable noise at the top end, the results at an incredible ISO10,000 were quite acceptable even when cropped.
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