This afternoon, I checked, as I do regularly, the Oxon Birding Blog website to see what has been seen recently, particularly at Farmoor Reservoir as it is one of the closer good birding sites.
At Farmoor, two sightings were of interest - a manx shearwater and two black necked grebes had been seen at 245 p.m. . I considered whether I should visit tomorrow morning, but decided for once, that I would go straight away, as not only had I not had a walk today, but also the chances are that none of those birds would still be present tomorrow. Arriving at 3.45 pm. the wind was quite brisk so I put on an extra jacket and went towards the causeway.
I questioned a couple who were leaving and they said that the grebes were on the north west corner of F1 amongst a large group of coots, and tufted ducks, whilst the manx shearwater had flown and would appear to have relocated at the south east corner of F2 -in other words the birds were direct opposite corners of the site!
I decided to continue across the causeway and round the side of F1 section of the reservoir to search for the grebes and then return for the manx shearwater. After a while scanning through my binoculars I could just make out the two black necked grebes but they were not close enough for a photo. I watched for a while, before returning the way I had come, and came across several birders looking across the other, larger, section of the reservoir. One of them was happy to point out to me the manx shearwater in the distance which was smaller than expected and seemed to disappear and reappear behind the waves as it swam out in the centre of the reservoir. The light was not great for photos as it was now gone 5 pm. but at least that is another tick for the year.
NB none of these birds were found at the reservoir the following morning
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