April 2013 Round-up

This month a belated spring finally arrived and with it a wave of migrants, all bunched together as the weather bottleneck finally unwound. Our star bird from last month, the Ferruginous Duck, hung around till the 9th but apart from that this month was noticeable for its lack of proper scare or rare birds. There was a frustratingly brief sighting of a county Mega in the form of a Ring-billed Gull that eluded all but the finder but apart from that there hasn't really been much that would be of interest at a national level this month. Therefore county birders had to occupy themselves with the passage migrants that were moving through the county.

At the start of the month there was another frustrating bird in the form of an elusive Lapland Bunting at Churn that only a few people managed to see. Thankfully the recent long-stayer at Farmoor in 2011 meant that it wasn't quite the grip-fest that it could have been. The Slavonian Grebe at Farmoor just made it into the new month before departing and the aforementioned Ring-billed Gull was found by Nic Hallam on the 2nd in the evening roost though not seen subsequently despite extensive searching by a large crowd. The long-staying and much admired Black Redstart hung around at Farmoor until about the 6th before moving onwards. On the 5th Port Meadow was graced with yet another pair of Avocets making a tally of 10 for this species on that site for this year, an amazing record for what is normally a rather scarce county bird. A few lingering Waxwings were seen on the 4th and 5th in Oxford before heading off North. Hawfinches are normally winter birds in the county but it wasn't until this month that they were reported in their usual place at Blenheim and in quite good numbers with a peak count of 18 birds on the 12th. It was also a good year for the Ring Ouzel passage including a very tame female bird at Linky Down that allowed very close approach and resulting in some excellent photos from the various county photographers. One of the memorable parts of this month was the good number of records of Pied Flycatcher. This is normally a rather scarce bird in the county which is recorded more or less annually but is very hard to twitch so a very confiding bird in Oxford behind the ice rink which was found on the 18th and actually stayed put for the whole of the next day was much enjoyed. Apart from this bird there were a couple of other records though they were the more usual untwitchable ones. Also worthy of note were a couple of Tree Pipit records, chiefly because rather than being fly-overs they were actually seen rather well, one at Otmoor and one in Burgess Field on Port Meadow, the latter showing well on the 19th down to about 10 yards. It was a good month for Common Redstarts with a good inland passage taking place over much of central England and Oxford got its fair share. Burgess Field had the highest count with four birds present on the 16th though various other county sites also got in on the act. It was a good month for Blue-headed and Channel Wagtails with several sightings noted in amongst the Yellow Wagtail passage at Farmoor. Also at Farmoor were a couple of Water Pipit sightings from the 8th to the 11th as well as the usual Tern passage with Black and Arctic Terns seen during this month in moderate numbers though there was just a single Sandwich Tern sighting this month. A singing male Wood Warbler (another very hard to twitch bird for the county) was found by Ben Carpenter on the 25th by the Thames at Abingdon though it proved to be untwitchable and had moved on before anyone else could see it. Either the same or another bird was seen later the same day along the Cherwell in Oxford but unfortunately the news only got out rather belatedly. A lovely female Dotterel just over the border at Bury Down proved popular with many of the county's birders and makes it into this report by virtue of a brief sortie over the border into Oxon airspace before returning to Berkshire. Finally, a Little Stint on Port Meadow on the 29th was a nice spring record. So all in all some nice passage birds but nothing really out of the ordinary that was twitchable.  Let's hope for a really good May.

I should also mention the amazing feat of Tom Wickens who likes to keep himself occupied not only by county year listing but also by county month listing. This month he managed to beat his all-time record with an astonishing count of 146 county birds within this month. Truly an amazing feat!

 Back In Time by Paul Chandler

 

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