After several years of using the SurfBirds site for hosting Port Meadow Birding I’ve decided to move over to BlogSpot which is where most other birding blogs are now located. I’ll still keep this site available for the purpose of historical records but new updates will now be at the new address.

New Site Address: http://portmeadowbirding.blogspot.com/

You can also reach this using the address: http://www.portmeadowbirding.com which is easier to remember

Thanks to everyone who reads this blog and all the positive feedback that I get from you all. See you over at the new place!

Adam

This blog is moving to a new address: please see the posting above for details

A blog to record sightings on and around Port Meadow in Oxford. Feel free to make comments with additional sightings (click on the comments link at the top of each entry) or alternatively e-mail them to:
info"at"portmeadowbirding.com (replace the "at" with @). Also any Port Meadow bird photos are much appreciated and will be fully accredited.

Where appropriate in the blog, sighting sources are referenced (OOS = www.oos.org.uk, BG = www.birdguides.com, OXB = Oxon Birds yahoo news group WoM = word of mouth/private e-mail).

The Meadow floods on a rainy May afternoon. © Adam Hartley

Overview
For information on access instructions and species that one might expect go to Background Info section.

Photos
All photo’s are copyrighted. Contact details for the photographer can be found by clicking on the photo album link on the right-hand side and then selecting the appropriate album where the contact details will appear at the top of the page.

YouTube & Twitter Channels
Some simple video clips of birds on Port Meadow can be seen at the Port Meadow Birding YouTube Channel. There is also a Twitter feed

Adam Hartley

2011 Sightings
Interesting sightings for 2011 so far include (presumed escapees in square brackets):

Waders: redshank, lapwing, golden plover, dunlin, black-tailed godwit, ruff, curlew, oystercatcher, ringed plover, little ringed plover, greenshank, common sandpiper, green sandpiper, wood sandpiper, grey plover, bar-tailed godwit, whimbrel, sanderling, SPOONBILL
Water Fowl: wigeon, teal, shoveler, pintail, tufted duck,  pochard, goosander, shelduck, goosander, red-breasted merganser, brent goose, garganey
Gulls/Terns:  yellow-legged gull, Caspian gull, Glaucous Gull, Mediterranean gull, Little Gull, Iceland Gull, Black Tern, + usual commoner gulls & terns
Misc. Others: yellowhammer, brambling, nuthatch, waxwing, raven, lesser redpoll, tree sparrow, grey wagtail, kingfisher, redstart, wheatear, yellow wagtail, channel wagtail, blue-headed wagtail, WHITE STORK, nightingale, cuckoo,
Birds of Prey: peregrine, buzzard, red kite, sparrowhawk, kestrel, tawny owl, osprey, hobby
Warblers: blackcap, garden warbler, chiffchaff, willow warbler, whitethroat, lesser whitethroat, sedge warbler, reed warbler, grasshopper warbler

2011 Year List Current Total 130
Hobby and spoonbill are the latest addition to the Port Meadow 2011 year list .

I’m reposting this just in case people are automatically scrolling down past the header and are not seeing this important message.

After several years of using the SurfBirds site for hosting Port Meadow Birding I’ve decided to move over to BlogSpot which is where most other birding blogs are now located. I’ll still keep this site available for the purpose of historical records but new updates will now be at the new address.

New Site Address: http://portmeadowbirding.blogspot.com/

You can also reach this using the address: http://www.portmeadowbirding.com which is easier to remember

Thanks to everyone who reads this blog and all the positive feedback that I get from you all. See you over at the new place!

Adam

A morning run around the patch, the first visit since my visit down to Cornwall last week. The floods are in their death throws with just two small flooded areas though there was still enough to attract 5 REDSHANK and 7 common terns (2 adults and 5 juveniles) though the little ringed plovers seemed to have moved on. Unfortunately I found a black-headed gull that was very sick, sick enough for me to be able to pick it up without protest. I took it home hoping to take it to St. Tiggywinkles should it survive any time but it died within the hour. Burgess Field held plenty of gatekeeper butterflies as well as some essex skippers. The marbled whites seem nearly to be finished now though I did spot a couple still out on the wing.

The hapless black-headed gull

I’ve been away for the week, hence the lack of posts. Fortunately Richard Foster has been keeping an eye on the patch in my absence and in fact on Sunday he turned up a cracking bird in the form of an adult summer plumaged LITTLE STINT. At this time of year this is quite a rare bird and I am suitably gripped off to have missed it. Fortunately Jason Coppock took some video footage so I could at least see what I was missing.

Also present on Sunday were 11 LITTLE RINGED PLOVER (mostly juveniles), 1 OYSTERCATCHER, 9 common terns and 1 YELLOW WAGTAIL.

On Monday there was unfortunately no sign of the Stint though there were 4 plovers still though by Friday this number had grown to an impressive 21 birds which must surely be approaching some kind of county record.

The highlight of this week has been LITTLE RINGED PLOVER numbers which have been building up to reach an amazing count of 19 birds on Thursday before falling back a little to 15+ today (Saturday). Apart from that there has been a REDSHANK, a COMMON SANDPIPER, a RINGED PLOVER, an OYSTERCATCHER and a SHELDUCK to add a bit of interest this week. The three lapwing chicks are all doing well and there were a couple of juvenile common terns being fed by an adult this week as well. Today there were quite a few STOCK DOVES around with a couple by the floods and a couple in Burgess Field NR. The butterflies are now flying in good numbers in Burgess Field with marbled white, ringlet, meadow brown, small heath, a gatekeeper and small skippers all on the wing at present. The floods themselves are now fast retreating and we are very much into the end game as far as they are concerned. Still we managed to keep them all through the spring passage and so can’t complain too much and if we get a decent bit of rain they could re-flood fairly quickly.

It was my first visit to the Meadow for a few days and I was saddened to see how the weekend’s heat had taken its toll on the flood levels which were now much depleted. It’s a pity as the autumn passage seems to be kicking off nicely with another nice variety of waders present this evening. Top of the bill was a single BLACK-TAILED GODWIT in Burgess Channel, with a REDSHANK and one of the OYSTERCATCHERS‘s along the North Channel and to round it off there was a nice party of 10 LITTLE RINGED PLOVERS near Burgess Field gate. There were also two STOCK DOVES on the Hinterland this evening and a few common terns were reported along the river. Let’s hope that we get some decent rain to replenish the floods so that we can enjoys some more wader passage action.

There was a reasonable scattering of passage waders about today with the 6 LITTLE RINGED PLOVER still about along the North Channel and joined by one extra one and a RINGED PLOVER. The two REDSHANK were still about and there were a total of four OYSTERCATCHERS reported though there was no sign of yesterday’s godwits. To round it off a PEREGRINE was also seen. My thanks to Tom Wickens for some of these sightings.

Richard Foster had a nice haul of returning waders today: 6 OYSTERCATCHERS, 3 LITTLE RINGED PLOVER which flew in at 5.45, 2 RINGED PLOVER, 2 BLACK-TAILED GODWIT and a COMMON SANDPIPER.

I was interviewed for Radio Oxford on Thursday afternoon. One of the readers of this blog, Martin Feynes (I hope that I’ve spelt the surname correctly), has developed a walk all around the outskirts of Oxford which they are featuring on the Jo Thoenes show on BBC Radio Oxford over the coming weeks, looking at a different section of the walk each time. This time it was the starting point at Port Meadow and to add some local interest they brought me in to talk about the bird life on the Meadow. The relevant section starts 13:50 minutes in and lasts about five minutes. Please note that the podcast will only be available until next Wednesday and can be found here