Christine's walking & birds blog

This is my eighth visit now without a lesser-spot encounter - and that really can drive you mad!

A large-ish flock of redwings was very vocal in Dorney Wood, keeping up a constant twittering in the tree-tops. Two meadow pipits were nice to see on the field adjacent to the woods, and a couple of mistle thrushes were more distant with fieldfares and a pale buzzard. Beyond them, three lapwings were wheeling in display.

On my last visit I flushed what was probably a woodcock; I'd gone off-track to avoid a vehicle-rutted mess of mud and was making my way across an area of flattened bracken. I'd just thought to myself "Must look out for woodcock" when it happened, too fast for the switching on of camera or even the lifting of bins.

But no lesser-spot, on that occasion or this. That's six visits (admittedly mostly brief ones) to the woods now without a sighting.

The chiffchaffs continue to bewilder me; while a second Cetti's by the concrete wall made little effort to hide as it made its way along the stream.

In fading light we saw the now-familiar shapes of two short-eared owls in bare thorn bushes on the edge of the scrub; and the last bird of the day was a peregrine, flying high across our path and heading north out over the Oxfordshire plain.

There were three shelduck on the Eton Wick flood, and the two white-fronted geese were still there. A rather pale Egyptian goose flew in and stood in the water, uttering a rasping bark over and over again. A little egret sat hunched on the old willows in the boundary hedgerow. A water rail dashed from one stand of cover to another on the far side of the Roundmoor Ditch.

Farther down the ditch behind the concrete garages, the brambles and ivy were alive with small birds. There were at least five chiffchaffs (two of them "pale" individuals) and a Cetti's was heard but not seen.  Two reed buntings were busy along the bank, and a bunch of long-tailed tits moved upstream bringing at least three goldcrests with them.

Best of all, two green sandpipers came flying over me calling, and went down on the edge of the common flood: a welcome sight and sound on another cold, grey, depressing day.

The nuthatches don't fight with any of the others; they just ignore them, zooming in and scattering smaller birds to left and right. We've seen nuthatches here since we moved in over twenty years ago, and I think we owe their presence to mature oak trees just up the road.

For the second day running I'd paid a visit hoping for lesser-spot, but was unlucky on the route I chose. I saw the two commoner woodpeckers, nuthatches, treecreepers, jays, and five buzzards.

We had arrived at the wrong time, really. With the tide already high waders were leaving the beach for the harbour.  I can't remember the last time we saw the harbour full of water. Ducks and waders were roosting on every island and structure available; this particular perch was being used by at least one hundred turnstones.


Greger generously offered to walk back along the muddy path on his own and then drive round to fetch me while I birded for a bit longer; so twice he had to negotiate a long flood in the lane to Church Norton. Other birds seen: a pair of peregrine falcons, a couple of bar-tailed godwits, knots, dunlins, oystercatchers, little egrets, grey plovers, curlews, a great black-backed gull and a single distant ringed plover; while on the sea, a tight raft of teal had me flummoxed until they flew closer to the shore.

Greger looked at the weather forecast for Saturday and suggested going on our held-over trip to the coast, my birthday present from December. So we're off to Pagham! Probably just for the day, but anyway - Yippee!