We'd arrived back in Banbury after 10pm on Friday evening and after a cup of coffee we arranged what we were going to do the next day - my daughter had booked tickets for a show in Birmingham and was going to meet friends for dinner, drinks and swan around in evening dresses - we offered to drive her there as parking and making each of these events would be tricky - no birding would be possible as it was set to rain through the morning and into the afternoon. I looked on the internet and found that there was a "Magic of Mowtown" concert on at Symphony Hall and booked a couple of the last remaining tickets. Saturday sorted.
Kevin Heath (@kev07713) and I arranged to meet on Sunday morning and head up to Draycote Water as we were both on the clock, particularly Kev who was taking his better half for lunch. The car park was empty at this hour and the sun had not yet risen - as we prepared, we could see clouds of gulls leaving the roost - one of them could be the Glaucous Gull that had been spotted going to roost - we'd look later on the water but not find it. We popped up onto the path and set off in an anti-clockwise rotation counting the ducks, gulls, goosanders and cormorants - there were still good numbers of both goldeneye and goosanders.
We reached the spit and scanned around for the long-tailed duck and great northern divers and couldn't locate either - a repeat of a week earlier? At this point we were joined by Dave South (@davidso55441100) who had taken some nice photos of meadow pipits on his way. Dave joined the search, mainly led by Kev as he was the only one sporting a scope. It wasn't too long before he was on the long-tailed duck, but it took a few attempts for Dave and I to see it as it was diving regularly and moving out of view. At last I had the tick I'd missed last week. Photos were only possible on the phone through Kev's scope as the bird was closer to the far side.
Kev continued to scan looking for the great northern divers and eventually offered me the scope to have a look. I picked out the two GN divers together working along the far bank - a year tick for Dave and I – phone scoped photos again but are not even worth posting. The site was filling up with people out for a morning walk and so we decided to head for Balscote Quarry and see what was happening there. On the way and as we cut cross-country, we stopped to view a small group of red-legged partridge feeding in a field not far from Horley and Hornton. We abandoned the cars down the narrow road, allowing Dave and I to get a couple of photos before we set off again.
Arriving at the Banbury Ornithological Society's Balscote Quarry Reserve there were a couple of cars already in place. We joined the group who were mainly photographers and were informed that the male brambling that has been a regular recently was not showing. There were however a number of other birds showing that I could add to my year list which included yellowhammer and green woodpecker.
I could hear Kev talking to someone on the other side of the screen and popped round to see who - it was Bryan Manston and Jeff Bishop, two Oxfordshire birders. I joined the chat until one of the group still watching the feeder area called to say the brambling had appeared in a bush - we all went over and soon were on the bird - Kev had just left and I arranged to be kindly dropped home by Dave South. We spent five minutes on the bird but were then on our way home for lunch with our respective families.
Year List: 83
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