Wayne Paes was on the main bridleway at Otmoor, at dusk on Tuesday. The Otmoor soundscape is stunning in spring, with booming Bitterns, drumming Snipe, reeling Grasshopper Warblers and the loud calls of displaying Lapwing and Curlew. Wayne decided that he would try to record some of this atmosphere on his phone, thinking that he could use it to create an interesting and personal alarm tone. As he began recording, a loud, almost electronic, call rang out from the marsh in front of him: “whip – whip“. Wayne had just found a Spotted Crake. Then nothing for about 5 minutes, before the bird began calling, this time incessantly. It was indeed, a Spotted Crake.
For a long time I thought that I had seen Spotted Crake in Oxfordshire. I could recall a juvenile bird at a tiny reservoir one September, in the far north of the county, that fed on the shoreline in perfect autumn sunshine, even coming right out into the open on occasion:
However, when I entered all my sightings onto eBird a few years ago, this site, Wormleighton Reservoir, came up as being in Warwickshire. The very far northern tip of Oxfordshire meets Northamptonshire to the east and Warwickshire to the west. Turns out that Wormleighton Reservoir is about 500 meters west of the county line (Oxfordshire is in green on the map below):
This meant that I was especially grateful to Wayne for finding the Spotted Crake on Otmoor on Tuesday. At dusk on Wednesday, I made my way to the main bridleway on Otmoor and joined a great bunch of local birders: Wayne, Terry, Pete Roby, Ben Sheldon and Conor MacKenzie, amongst others. The previous day the Spotted Crake had begun calling at 20:47, although Ben Sheldon, ever-the-scientist, pointed out it that should start slightly later today, as there were two minutes more daylight than the day before. He was right. And the bird followed exactly the same pattern of singing as on Tuesday: two calls, as if to warm up, then five minutes of silence, before beginning calling constantly, once every second or so from 21:00:
Using only my phone, I recorded a few other night-singing species whilst we were admiring the sound of the singing Spotted Crake. Here is an audio-montage of Otmoor at dusk in late April, complete with Spotted Crake. It is a fabulous place: