Cotswolds - 24th-28th October

After a few days in Cornwall and the excitement of the Grey Catbird, Sarah, Tobias and I headed to our cottage in the Cotswolds for a few days to relax and catch-up with work. I didn't plan to go birding as such and with a dramatic fall in nighttime temperatures there was not a lot of moth'ing to be done.

With the cold and clear nights I experimented with some star trail photography following the tips provided on this website. I was fairly pleased with my first effort but it was difficult to frame the image I wanted exactly, I would have preferred the North Star to have been in the frame and further to the left.

I ran the moth trap for two nights and caught little, the highlights being a Feathered Thorn, December Moth and Green-brindled Crescent but temperatures were around 6c so I didn't expect much.

I spent a couple of hours at Slimbridge on 26th, there was not a massive amount to be seen. There were good numbers of Shoveler, Pintail and Teal, mainly in eclipse plumage and looking far from spectacular. From the Zeiss hide there were two Peregrine, Marsh Harrier, c.150 Golden Plover, 200 Lapwing and five Common Crane. I saw little else of note and the place was heaving with people enjoying their half-term breaks. I headed home and met Sarah for lunch in Cheltenham.

Star-trail from Cowley, taken using Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark ii on Live Composite mode at 45mm F8, 800 ISO with a three hour exposure and images taken every 25 seconds.

Feathered Thorn - Cowley, Cheltenham

December Moth - Cowley, Cheltenham

Shoveler - Slimbridge WWT

Lapwing and Golden Plover - Slimbridge WWT

Moulting Pintail - Slimbridge WWT

Pennington Marsh - 27th March and Cotswolds 29th March to 1st April

Another lengthy spell with little or no birding. After dropping Tobias at a party in Lymington on 27th March, Sarah and I went for an afternoon walk around Pennington Marshes taking in Jetty Lagoon and Oxey Marsh. A male Garganey had been present on Oxey since the 19th March and it didn't take long to pick it up as it fed at the back of the lagoon with Teal, it was a little distant and in fairly poor light but nice to see. Other birds on the marsh included around 50 Brent Goose and small numbers of the usual winter wildfowl and waders.

Garganey - Oxey Marsh, Pennington

Garganey - Oxey Marsh, Pennington

From 29th March to 1st April we were up at our cottage in the Cotswolds I was hoping to go birding but we were unable to get childcare for Tobias and so I spent most of the weekend messing around in the garden planting up our small wildflower area. I ran the moth trap on each of the three nights and recorded the following species;

• Brindled Beauty
• Chestnut
• Clouded Drab
• Common Quaker
• Dotted Chestnut
• Dark Sword-grass
• Diurnea fagella
• Early Grey
• Early Thorn
• Hebrew Character
• Herald
• March Moth
• Mottled Grey
• Oak Beauty
• Pale Pinion
• Red Chestnut
• Shoulder Stripe
• Small Quaker
• Twin-spotted Quaker
• White-marked

White-marked was a new species for me which was pleasing, I don't get to see many new moths as I have been trapping for over 30 years so this was the definite highlight. The species is locally distributed in central southern England and into the south-Midlands and south and mid-Wales - I haven't really trapped in these areas before hence the reason the species is new.

Dark Sword-grass - Normally considered a migrant

White-marked - A new moth for me

Oak Beauty

Shoulder Stripe

Twin-spotted Quaker

Dotted Chestnut

The Herald

Brindled Beauty

Pale Pinion

Mottled Grey

Red Chestnut

A Pheasant coming after the moths

Cotswold Birding - 3rd February

The 3rd February found me heading up to the Cotswolds for a relaxing weekend but I couldn't resist some birding en-route. First stop was for four redhead and a male Smew that had been present for a few days on Pit 29 of the Cotswold Water Park. Arriving at around 11:00 I was fairly optimistic that these birds would give themselves up quickly so setting up my scope I was disappointed when the first scan produced no-sign of them - 25 Tufted Duck, three Red-crested Pochard and five Great-crested Grebe were the highlights. I walked from the southern end of the pit to the northern end scanning all the way across both Pit 29 and 35 and then eventually Pit 38 but there was no sign of the Smew. I decided to cut my losses and head off before the rain forecast for the afternoon set-in.

I headed for Stow-on-the-Wold just as news broke of the continued presence of the Blue Rock Thrush and just as the heavens opened. A 45 minute drive through persistent rain did not bode well. I arrived at Fisher's Close but there was no sign of the bird so I wandered to Maugersbury Park where I quickly located the bird on the roof of number 9. I watched the bird for around 30 minutes, it seemed to favour perching on the solar panels on the roof of the property. In this dull light and rain the plumage looked largely slate grey with perhaps a slight bluish tinge. On one occasion the bird dropped down to eye level when the blue plumage tones were more evident.

First identified on 27th December 2016 but by then already present for a week this bird seems to be in an unlikely location for a genuine bird. However, it is hard to believe that such a scarce bird in captivity would not support rings, even commonly kept species such as Budgerigars and Zebra Finch are usually ringed - and why has no one claimed it as their lost bird? The bird seems to have a slightly drooping left wing and some feather wear but such features are commonly seen in wild birds also.  DNA analysis has indicated that the bird is of one of the southern European or North African subspecies either the nominate subspecies or longirostris. I would have thought that most of the captive birds would be of Asian origin where trapping for the cage bird trade is more common place. While its geographical location and rather odd choice of a housing estate would not seem to indicate a genuine bird I can only see that on balance this must be a wild bird.

There are six accepted British records of Blue Rock Thrush as follows:

• 4th-8th June 1985 - Skerryvore Lighthouse, SSW of Tiree, Argyll. Male.
• 4th June 1987 - Moel-y-gest, Gwynedd. Male.
• 14th-15th October 1999 - St. Mary's, Isles of Scilly. Male.
• 25th October 1999 - Cot Valley, Cornwall. Male (possibly same bird as the Isles of Scilly bird)
• 14th-18th May 2000 - Geevor, Pendeen, Cornwall. First-summer female.
• 11th April 2007 - Elan Valley, Powys. Male

Interestingly all these are of birds in the west of the British Isles perhaps making the Stow-on-the-Wold bird a little less surprising in terms of its geographical location although the time of the year is at odds with the other British records. Surely, the spring records are of overshooting migrants from the south and therefore of the same race as the Stow-on-the-Wold bird?

Blue Rock Thrush - Number 9 Maugersbury Park, Stow-on-the-Wold

After getting my fill of the Blue Rock Thrush I headed for Kingsway in Quedgeley where up to 40 Waxwing had been present since the 24th January. I spent a fair bit of time looking around the orchard and playing field with no success and being gripped off by the locals pointing to where they had seen the birds. Eventually six Waxwing flew north overhead and appeared to land in the nearby estate but despite trying to relocate the birds I did not see them again. It was time to head to the cottage and open a bottle of red wine.