With two of the family unwell and tucked up at home, I decided it wouldn’t be fair to share a car with Kev @kev07713 for several hours, potentially passing something on so close to Christmas - although I feel fine and show no signs of having picked anything up from them. I knew he was keen to go to Blashford Lakes, where a white-tailed eagle has been hanging about for the last couple of days, but it felt excessive to take two cars that distance. Instead, I proposed Blenheim for the crossbills and a drake ring-necked duck that had been present on the main lake for several days - although I'd visited recently, Kev hadn't and it promised to deliver good views of crossbills.
We agreed to meet and park, making our way in via the Footpath Entrance on the north side of Woodstock, probably the closest access point to where the crossbills can be found. Parking is restricted to four hours here, so we settled on an 8.30am meet. On the way there, the views were beautiful: the orange glow of the rising sun, blue skies, and mist lying low over the fields - a glorious start to the day. However, there were also patches of thick fog, and I hoped this wouldn’t scupper our visit, though with a good forecast I was confident the sun would burn through the blanket as the morning wore on.
The fog had cleared by the time we arrived and parked in Woodstock, but it gradually reappeared as we reached the footpath gate and climbed towards the plantation where the crossbills have been seen and fed. In places the fog thinned as the sun began to break through, with red kites and buzzards perched in and around the plantation. A fieldfare and mistle thrush called as they departed the plantation.
As we circled the plantation, we first heard and then saw at least 30 crossbills wheeling over the trees, seemingly arriving from the Combe Gate direction. Eventually they settled, though frustratingly towards the back of the plantation, so we continued round to the spot where I’d watched them about ten days earlier. We could hear them calling intermittently from the trees, but they didn’t show on this side. Ravens called from behind us, and one flew past before landing on the statue — the Column of Victory.
In the end we decided to check the far side and there found at least 20 crossbills feeding on the larches, carrying cones up to perch in trees adjacent to the plantation and work on them in the sun, occasionally pausing to preen. They fed like this for around 20 minutes before something spooked them, sending the flock circling out and dropping deeper into the trees, where they were eventually lost from view.
As we waited, a couple of ravens called and flew along the opposite hillside, where they were mobbed by other corvids, briefly coming into clear view before wheeling away and landing obscured behind another copse of trees. Overhead we had calls from siskins.
Eventually we decided to return to the other side of the trees to watch from there. At first there was no sign of the crossbills, but before long a small flock flew up, circled, and dropped back in, mostly out of view. As they settled, another birder arrived and, as he drew closer, I realised it was Michael Enticott - it had been a while. He caught the birds just as they went down.
We waited and chatted until the crossbills began to show again, albeit briefly, before flushing out once more and circling to our left. This time it was the larger flock, numbering around 40 birds, which eventually settled deeper in the larches. More conversation followed, including tales of Michael’s recent holiday in China, before we decided to try the other side of the plantation again. That proved unsuccessful, so we returned to the sunlit side once more.
There we again managed brief views of a handful of birds in flight before a couple more birders arrived, one of them our friend Dave South. Dave was out for a walk with his wife and one of his daughters and had just missed the action. After pausing for a while, we made our way down to Vanbrugh’s Grand Bridge, where a ring-necked duck had been reported, associating with the pochards. We scanned both sides of the bridge, but there was no sign of either the pochards or the ring-necked duck.
A young girl and her father approached and we shared the location of the crossbills; in return, they told us that the ducks had recently been flushed by a boat and that many appeared to have departed, including the pochards. Another birder mentioned that a small number of pochards had landed on the far eastern side of the water before drifting around the corner and out of sight. We went to investigate and found a small gathering of pochards, tufted ducks, coot, mallards and others, but no ring-necked duck - that was a bit unlucky. Returning to the bridge, we scanned again without success, and with time moving on we made one final circuit of the eastern side, again drawing a blank. We reached the cars just in time to avoid a potential parking ticket, and I headed for home.
Inevitably, as I write this entry on Sunday morning, a report has come through confirming that the ring-necked duck is back in place - typical!
Year list: 250.
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