This little stunner brightened up another dull morning today. The attraction was that I had not previously gained pictures of a Black-necked Grebe in breeding plumage. This one was present for it’s second day at the grim reservoir serving Oxon’s grimmest town, Banbury. So with the dismal weather pattern of recent weeks having turned dry and merely overcast, I ventured 30-something miles up the M40 motorway to take a look.
2018 so far is an above average year for Black-necked in Oxfordshire, with this scarcer Grebe having been recorded at several sites since my return from America. They are more usually an infrequent inland visitor seen mostly between July and November, and again in the early spring. As a breeding species in England BNG is very rare, the main range occurring eastward from continental Europe. Today’s is the year’s first Oxon individual to exhibit the distinctive summer colouration, and so has been a popular draw.
I myself was not to be disappointed. I will not call these poor-light images (above and below) photographs as I am not a bird photographer. But as records of what is by any standards a rather special and attractive water bird they will suffice until I can manage something better.
Having lost my appetite for all out county birding at the end of last year, I have been more selective over what to experience in 2018. After seven seasons of going for everything in Oxfordshire, while definitely not keeping a year list, just enjoying what happens to grab my fancy is proving more motivating than I had thought. The extended cold and wet weather has served to create a rather different and interesting March and early-April mix of county birds more usually associated with late winter: Common Scoter, Whooper Swan, Iceland Gull and of course the widespread wintering Hawfinches.
I am not one to bemoan the late arrival of hirundines and other same-old, samey migrants seen every year. Rather since my last post herein I have enjoyed all the above-mentioned scarcer species locally as well as the Black-necked Grebes. With the pressure of needing to chase everything removed, more has also been getting done at home and (weather allowing) my wildlife garden is looking more orderly at least in parts. I have also begun to collect certain exotic plants, but more of that in the months to come.
After leaving the grim north I headed for the usual stamping ground of Farmoor Reservoir, that today resembled a roll call of county birding as it often does in the passage season. And so I found myself staying and socialising through the rest of the afternoon. In the atrocious climactic conditions of the last few weeks it would have been easy to become depressed, but I have managed the situation far more effectively than when I last opted out of work in 2015. Today’s mix of good birds and good company proved rather more therapeutic than I could have imagined.
Ramblings and Scribblings 