The regular Friday night conflab decided that we would stay closer to home this weekend and I suggested to Kevin Heath that we could visit the Banbury Orthithological Society's (BOS) Bicester Wetlands Reserve – he’d never been. Disturbance to the reserve is kept to a minimum by viewing from hides or screens. Bicester Wetland Reserve is managed by the BOS on behalf of Thames Water and is a member-only (keyholder) reserve due to the nature of the site with heavy moving equipment and hazardous areas.
We arrived shortly after sunrise and flushed a great spotted woodpecker from a feeder, along with an array of great and blue tits. We entered the hide and looked across the scrape and back into the water treatment workings - the first obvious sighting was the number of teal on and beside the water - a count yielded 96 but there were probably others out of sight. We also had gadwall and shoveler on the water and handfuls of moorhens on the fringes. Kev turned and looked back over the pool in the water treatment site as I mentioned a few of the species that I'd seen there; within moments a kingfisher appeared on cue - it was distant but fished from some railings and a signpost. quite successfully.
Kev popped out the hide and when he poked his head back in, he told me that a peregrine had gone through sending up the starlings and pied wagtails on the workings - unfortunately it hadn't stopped and was away so no chance of me connecting. We had regular visits from a pair of great spotted woodpeckers and a little egret dropped into the treatment site pool and then half a dozen house sparrows onto the feedeers. A lovely wren fed in the flattened reeds immediately below the elevated hide.
We prepared to investigate the rest of the site but as we did so we had a flypast from a grey heron and three roe deer poked their head out along the back edge of the hedgerow behind. A jay could be heard calling but we didn't lay eyes on it.
We dropped into 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and then to the hide by the back pool seeing red kite, more wrens, and a buzzard. There was nothing on the back pool and so we didn't stay long. Stepping out of the hide Kev noted a small flock of birds land on the field, and as we made our way back, we stopped several times and could make out they were 14 meadow pipits - when we got closer they took to the wing and one landed in better view for his photo to be taken. A little further on we added a couple of greenfinches.
Back in the main hide we were fortunate to see three snipe and one that flew across and out of view below the ridge around the water's edge. There were a few black-headed gulls around the site and in the workings of the new Technology Park in front. One larger bird caught our attention and after some investigation we could see it was a yellow-legged gull.
A great morning's birding and 34 species recorded (excluding the redwing and peregrine seen only by Kev and the jay we only heard).
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