It's been a good week for birding. I know that it's peak passage time but I've been very pleasantly surprised at the quality of birds that have been cropping up in and around Oxfordshire this week. I've not been on a major trip but instead lots of local trips plus one short twitch over the border to the Berkshire downs.

It started off on Tuesday when I decided that I would stop work early and head off to Farmoor reservoir to try and see the black terns which had been passing through recently. Also there were reports of little gulls as well as several whimbrel sightings. The weather was rather mixed: it had been raining on and off during the day and I decided that it would probably continue in that fashion for the rest of the day so, despite the ominous clouds, I set off with my 22 month old son L in tow for the reservoir. Just as we arrived it started to rain quite heavily so I installed L in his pushchair with the rain cover over him, and buttoned up my water proof. There were loads of swifts, swallows, and martins around all flying very low, a sign of bad weather and it indeed proved to be so. The rain got steadily worse and I was soon drenched from the waist downwards as I'd chosen not to bother bringing my water proof trousers. Meanwhile L slept through it all. Having got this wet I decided to persevere and scanned the reservoir for interesting birds. Through the gloom I could make out some distant terns but couldn't see any black's. I did manage to see a few yellow wagtails on the causeway and on the green barley bails that are strung out across the reservoir (to prevent algae growth) there was an arctic tern and also an interesting gull which had a lovely pinkish hue to it, a rather faint grey hood and dark markings on its lower mantle. It looked quite exotic but it's tiny size gave it away as a first summer little gull which was a year tick for me. By this stage I was getting rather cold so I decided to call it a day.

The next day the weather was better and I decided to head back out there to have another crack at the black terns which, according to Bird Guides, had been seen again there earlier in the day. I took the precaution of bringing my water proof trousers this time and L and I headed off once more to the reservoir. As soon as I got to the reservoir edge I scanned the water and in the distance I could see a few black terns as well as a vast number of arctic terns hawking the water. The Bird Guides posting had estimated over 100 of them and it was quite a sight to behold. I walked round to the barley bails again where some were perched and a black tern amongst them. I even managed a passable digi-scoping effort with it. Despite keeping a look-out I didn't see any whimbrel which I was still keen to see. In fact as I was leaving I met a fellow local birder who informed me that he'd seen a whimbrel on my local patch Port Meadow that very afternoon! After dinner I nipped down there to see if it was still about but I couldn't find it. Still, I'd managed to see the black terns which was nice.

A Black Tern on a barley bail on Farmoor Reservoir

The next morning I went out for my usual run on Port Meadow. As usual I took my old bins with me (I don't want to damage my new ones by shaking them about too much) and I stopped to scan the Meadow by the entrance to the Burgess Field NR. To my surprise I say a large brown bird just to the north of the floods (where the whimbrel had been seen the previous afternoon). Although it was some distance away and my old bins are pretty dismal I could see enough to realise that it was in fact a whimbrel. I continued on my run, hoping to get a better view further round the Meadow. I did see it again but not from any closer and it had gone by the time I was leaving the Meadow. So not a great view but a definite tick both for my year list and also my life one.

The next day (Friday) I again went on my run on the Meadow. No whimbrels present this morning so I decided to spend more time running around Burgess Field to check out the warblers. Out of the 10 common warblers I'd still not found sedge, lesser whitethroat or cetti's on Burgess Field and was interested to see if I could do so. I did find a warbler that I couldn't identify - it looked like a rather large garden warbler with a song that didn't sound quite right. Having looked it up in the book I'm none the wiser so perhaps it was a fat garden warbler. I also found another garden warbler of the correct size and with a more standard song. It was showing well and I could even make out its white eye ring. Seeing that just left lesser whitethroat to get for my year list on the common warbler front.

That same day at lunch time I was just about to go down to lunch (I work from home) when I thought that I'd check the Bird Guides web-site to see if anything had turned up. To my surprise a dotterel had been seen on Bury Downs on the ridgeway just over the border in Berkshire. It had been posted just 20 minutes ago and I knew that last week one had been seen there which had hung around all day so it was a reasonable candidate for a lunch-time twitch. I made a quick packed lunch and headed off for the downs. It took about half an hour to get there (the traffic out of the city was quite heavy) and as I pulled in to the car park I saw a couple of birders there with their scopes. I asked if they were there for the dotterel, which had been posted as being about 1km west of the car park, and they said that they were and that it was in fact right in front of me! Indeed it was right in front of where I'd parked at about 30m range. I then spent a thoroughly enjoyable 20 minutes eating my packed lunch and watching a cracking dotterel through the scope. In fact it was close enough that I was kicking myself for not having brought my camera as it would have made a great photo. I left at about 2 pm and managed to get a reasonable amount of work done that afternoon so it had been a most excellent lunch-time twitch. I later saw from BG that it was gone by 2:30pm so I'd been lucky to get there in time.

Saturday morning I was once more on my run on the Meadow and scanned the floods from the usual place. To my delight there were a couple of large waders working the floods. What's more, even from that distance I could see that they weren't the usual stuff, being much paler that the usual ruff and redshanks as well as larger. I spent a couple of minutes wondering whether to run back home to get my scope and proper bins or to run round to the other side of the floods as usual and to see if I could get a better view from the other side. In the end I decided on the latter and ran unusually fast round my usual route. On the way in Burgess Field I still managed to see another garden warbler and also a female sparrowhawk. As I got back on to the Meadow I would run a while and then stop for a scan.  Suddenly, there was a stampeed of the local horses that are kept on the Meadow with a herd of about 40 running past the end of the floods. I was worried that the birds would be put to flight but they only flew a bit further up the floods. I was able to get around to the right side of the floods from the point of view of the light and then gradually crept forward until I was just across the flood water from them at a distance of about 50m. By this stage I'd seen a fair bit of them including them in flight and the white wedge up their backs, together with a white rump and no wing bars meant that I was homing in on greenshanks as the ID. I could also see that the size was larger than a redshank but not as large as a godwit and the colouring was correct for a greenshank. To top it off finally I could just make out the green legs as well so I was confident in adding greenshank to my year list. In fact I'd only ever seen them once before as a boy so it was a great find.

That afternoon I decided to go with L and my younger daughter B to Otmoor, the local RSPB reserve. My eldest daughter  K was going round to a friend' s but my VLW (very lovely wife) was feeling a bit poorly so my  taking the other two meant that she could have a bit of a rest.  When I go with L he's always very good and enjoys his outings but B, although being 10, could be a bit more trouble and it wasn't long before she'd got L out of the pushchair and the two of them had found the one muddy puddle that was left on the track. L managed to fall over and get his trousers sopping wet and covered in mud so that I had to take them off him. Still it was a warm day so he just wore his nappy. On the birding front Otmoor was fully in "spring mode" with loads of singing warblers everywhere as well as distant calling cuckoos. I was particularly looking for lesser whitethroats and I did manage to hear a couple and caught the briefest of glimpses of something grey which headed into a thicket and then started singing. It's a "probable" and in the unlikely event of my not seeing any others this year I'll probably give it to myself come the end of the year but I am hoping to see some before then.  Other birds of interest that we saw were a brace of red-legged partridges in a field, a couple of hobbies hawking over the marsh, loads of whitethroats and reed warblers and a few singing cetti's (not seen though). We heard a couple of grasshopper warblers and saw a wheatear in the distance. There were a couple of ringed plover by the edge of a pool and a redshank was flying around. There were several hares loping around in the fields and a cuckoo flew over briefly. So a couple of year ticks for me (red-legged partridge and cuckoo) and the probable lesser whitethroat that I'm holding in reserve.

On the list front I got a helpful comment from Robin Dryden concerning my tree pipit sighting in Rainham Marsh (it's nice to know that someone is actually reading my blog!):

"I have a word of caution about your Pipit at Rainham. Meadow Pipits also have a parachute song flight. The two fundamental differences are the call and the legs. The mipit has a rather monotonous weak song while that of the tripit is much richer. In the parachute flight, the tripit dangles it's legs, the mipit doesn't. Habitat wise, tripits are usually in wooded clearings and heaths, mipits in open areas but with a lot of overlap. I haven't been to Rainham but I would suspect mipit is more likely. You might want to look up a recording of the call to confirm your id? "

In my ignorance I had not been aware of this distinction and so decided my tree pipit sighting was not reliable enough - it's all part of the process of gaining experience. Anyway, my year list has moved on surprisingly well this week:

153:  little gull
154:  black tern
155:  whimbrel (LIFER)
156:  garden warbler
157:  greenshank
158:  dotterel (LIFER)
159:  red-legged partridge
160:  cuckoo

There's still turtle dove and lesser whitethroat which I can reasonably expect from Otmoor this season and I hope that I can pick up a few more passage migrants during this peak time of year. I expect that things are going to start slowing down once the prime passage is over in a few weeks time.