Katherine is happiest outside and I like birdwatching so the two of us quite often head across town to Port Meadow in the morning. It’s been blustery for a few days now and Port Meadow is about as exposed a spot as you can find around here, but I decided we needed to get out this morning anyway. Besides, the wind has been from the east, i.e., good for bringing birds out here from the continent.
The wind was rather fierce and Katherine thought it of dubious merit at first. But then I think she picked up the word for it (though I never heard her say ‘wind’ in a quite intelligible way) and then, of course, the wind was a wonderful thing. Her love for the latest name seems to bleed over into love for the named. So she was happy.
I, too, was quite pleased with the morning. The flooded portion of the meadow held 27 Bar-tailed Godwits and a Black-bellied Plover (or a Grey Plover, as the English call them). It’s the first time I’ve seen a Black-bellied Plover around here and it was nice to witness part of the amazing passage of Bar-tailed Godwits that’s been taking place the last few days. Thousands of them have been reported moving along the coasts and numerous small flocks have found their way inland. Usually, they stay on the coasts — long-time local birdwatchers tell me that in most years the total annual count for the county stays in the single digits. So 27 at a time is quite amazing. And a number of flocks like that have come through in the last few days. Another pleasing feature was that both the godwits and plover were in their more colourful breeding plumage. Most waders — the group of birds to which these two species belong — frequent England in the winter and then fly to colder climes for the summer, which means that we usually only get to see them in their rather dull winter plumage.
After enjoying the birds on the floods, I headed into a treed area next to the Meadow to look for Whitethroats. They’re a perfectly common bird around here, but they have only just arrived from their wintering grounds farther south and so I hadn’t yet seen one. I saw eight of them today, so now I’ve definitely seen them.
Feeling very satisfied with the morning out, I then started to head back. Just as I neared the floods again, I noticed the resident birdwatcher, i.e., the chap who maintains the Port Meadow birding blog, practically flying off his bicycle in his haste to get his binoculars on a bird. Naturally, I paused to check out what he was looking at. A White Stork!! This is what in birding lingo is called a ‘mega’. Not because of its size, although it was a strikingly large bird, but because of its rarity. White Storks aren’t resident in the UK, let alone in Oxfordshire. Word has it that it’s the first stork ever seen at Port Meadow. After a couple of minutes of watching it on the ground, we watched as it took off, flew over our heads, and off to the east. I don’t think Katherine quite understood why the half dozen adults around here were quite so excited all of a sudden.
This being England, home of hordes of crazed ‘twitchers’, the bird was immediately reported to several birding hotlines. It left too quickly for any additional twitchers to make it to Port Meadow, but, if you follow the relevant services, you’ll now see periodic reports of someone seeing a White Stork flying over as it is making its way east across the country.
To think that if I’d left a minute or two earlier, I would have missed one of the best birds of the year. As it was, I was merely a bit sweaty and out-of-breath for lunch in Merton College.
Sydney
Alan Schmierer