I’ve always been drawn to birds. I joined bird walks at Dinton Pastures Country Park in Berkshire as a 10-year-old back in 1980 and was a Junior Voluntary Warden there in my mid-teens. Birding took a back seat through university but was re-kindled in the late 1990s. As I began to travel abroad, the thrill of racing around the UK to see vagrants seemed to fade. Now with wife and family, life is very local. I recorded the bird species that I came across in the 8 years that we lived in Cuddesdon, Oxfordshire in the Birdless Cuddesdon Blog and participated in local bird surveys for the British Trust for Ornithology, combined with the occasional foreign trip, often teaming up with Richard Campey or Ian Reid.
Autumn birding
I spent 8 autumn weeks on Lundy Island between 2006 and 2014 with Richard, Tim Jones, Tim Davies and James Diamond hunting for migrants. Birds found there inlcude Rose-coloured Starling (extra points as it was on my birthday); several Richard’s Pipits and Yellow-browed Warblers; Common Rosefinch; Golden Oriole; Eurasian Wryneck; four Ortolan Buntings and a Quail. Since 2019 I have visited Shetland in the autumn with various combinations of Andy Last, Dave Lowe, Mark Merritt and Jason Coppock. In October 2022, Andy and I found a Blyth’s Reed Warbler on Unst and two Hornemann’s Arctic Redpolls on Mainland (record accepted by BBRC). A trip in 2023 saw us stumble across a Barred Warbler and a Little Bunting on Unst.
Oxfordshire Big Days
I am one of the authors of the species accounts for the Oxfordshire Bird Report and have taken part in a number of Oxfordshire Big Days, with the aim of seeing as many species as possible in a single day in the county. In 2017 Jason Coppock, Dave Lowe, Andy Last and I saw 104 species, and in 2018 Dave, Andy and I reached 106 species. These totals were eclipsed in 2024, when on 27th April Ben Sheldon, Thomas Miller and I completed a Low Carbon Big Day and set a new record of 118 species recorded in Oxfordshire, all by bike and on foot. My write-up of this fabulous day was published in the August 2024 edition of Birdwatch magazine.
Most of my county birding has been local patch birding, so opportunities to find rare birds have been limited. My county list can be found in the sidebar of this blog, my county finds include a flock of 5 Black-necked Grebe in 2002; a Ring-necked Duck in 2004 (the 10th county record); Waxwing flocks in 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2016; a Ring Ouzel in Cuddesdon in 2010; Oxfordshire’s first-ever winter record of Common Whitethroat in January 2012; a Little Gull and a Ring Ouzel in 2017 and a Smew in 2018. The summer of 2018 saw Dave, Jason and I discover breeding Eurasian Goshawks in the county, the first known territory in decades.
The Lye Valley local patch – a new era
In early 2019 I began regularly watching the small Lye Valley nature reserve (and the adjacent Oxford Golf Club course) in Headington, Oxford. Things began when Dave Lowe and I found a Pied Flycatcher (a county rarity) in August 2019. Highlights since include a superb Yellow-browed Warbler, two Hawfinch records in a week, a second Pied Flycatcher, a couple of singing Common Grasshopper Warblers, flyover Oystercatcher and Common Scoter, a couple of Jack Snipe, plus the first Oxford City record of Corn Bunting since 1980!
Even more remarkably for a site with no standing water, were 4 fly-over Bar-tailed Godwit, several Great White Egrets and two records of flyover Whooper Swans (here and here)! One of the many pleasures of regular local patch coverage has been establishing that Tree Pipits (a scarce bird in the county) are occasional migrants to the Oxford Golf Club Course in urban Oxford. In January 2024 the Oxfordshire Ornithological Society published my report “The Birds of the Lye Valley Area 2019-2023“, as part of their Patchwork Project series.
In recent years, with many others, I have come to enjoy bird photography. It helps capture the moment and provides a useful identification record. I am certainly no professional with the camera, but I have had pictures published in Birdwatch magazine, Dutch Birding and in the Handbook of Western Palearctic Birds (2018). A couple of my pictures have been included in Birdguides’s “Notable Pictures of the Week”, in 2019 and 2024. In 2021 I became the eBird reviewer for Oxfordshire. Birding has been a fantastic springboard: first to drawing and painting in my younger years, later to photography and video, travel and environmental politics. It has shaped me and continues to inspire me.
This website is a personal record of the adventure that birding has brought me.
