Black Redstart by Rail 2nd February 2019

On Thursday night it snowed heavily enough to make the prospect of venturing out with the car for any distance the next day extremely hazardous, and was most definitely not recommended by those in charge of the highways and byways of the fair county of Oxfordshire.

My home village of Kingham, in northwest Oxfordshire, was a few inches deep in snow by Friday morning but I managed to make the five minute journey in the car to our local railway station to allow Mrs U to catch a train to Oxford from whence she would make a connection that would take her to distant Harrogate for a weekend at a Health Spa with my daughter.

Even such a short journey was risky but needs must and with relief I returned home, slalomed the car up our snow bound drive, left it there and firmly shut the back door of the house, and to my immense frustration, wrote off a day where I had  planned to go and see a Black Redstart that had taken up residence for the last week on the magnificent and venerable walls of Christ Church in the heart of the City of Oxford.

Black Redstarts are not regular in Oxfordshire and wintering birds are definitely unusual but occurrences of this species in the county seem to have become more regular of late, most often on passage when they can turn up almost anywhere across the county, usually on or around buildings and only remaining for a few days. Remarkably, almost exactly two years ago in February 2017 another Black Redstart spent a few days at another part of Oxford University, namely Lincoln College, similarly frequenting the ancient walls of the college  I also can recall when we first moved to our house in Kingham in northwest Oxfordshire twenty six years ago, one of the first birds I saw was a Black Redstart flitting around on our dry stone walls. I have never seen one in our garden nor in Kingham since!

Black Redstarts are widespread in southern and central Europe, Asia and northwest Africa extending from Great Britain, south to Morocco and east to central China. It is resident in the warmer south of its range but northern birds migrate southwards for the winter. In Great Britain it is a relatively common passage migrant and winter visitor, being found mainly on the east and southern coasts although some do occur inland.They used to be well known for frequenting the many bombed and derelict buildings in London shortly after the end of the Second World War.

Black Redstarts are a scarce breeding bird in southern and western Britain with only 20-50 pairs breeding but are widespread in Europe and can be found in many small towns and villages, an urban habitat they appear to prefer to their original habitat of stony ground on mountains and cliffs. Doubtless the bare concrete walls and cliff like buildings in industrial and urban areas strike any Black Redstart as a suitable, maybe even a preferable, substitute. On business trips to Germany I regularly saw them around the terminal building at the small airport at Karlsruhe and heard and saw them singing in the ancient walled town of Rothenburg, amongst other locations.

The current incumbent at Christ Church would be a good bird to catch up with but it was obviously not to be on Friday. Discretion was definitely the better part of valour and I resolved to wait, probably until next week when  the snow and ice had thawed and the roads were reasonably safe. The depressing thought did occur to me that with all this snow, ice and freezing temperatures there was every likelihood the Black Redstart would move on or even succumb to the weather.

I awoke on Saturday morning and groaned, as on looking out of the window I found that we were still very much snow and now icebound although the sun was shining brightly from a clear blue sky.Venturing out with the car would still be too risky. I lay in bed and pondered on walking to our local BBOWT reserve of Foxholes and then it struck me. I had dropped my wife off at a railway station yesterday, our local  railway station, the trains were running and the Black Redstart was in Oxford which is where trains from our station pass through on their way to London.

A eureka moment. I could take the train to see the Black Redstart! Despite my qualms about whether it would still be there I decided to take the gamble. The walk from our house to the station was less than twenty minutes. I hastily checked the  train departure  times and found that on Saturday a train went to Oxford every hour and there were no predicted delays for Saturday. Donning warm clothing and packing my camera bag I made my way on icy footpaths to the station and boarded a packed train at 9.51am. In half an hour I was at Oxford and leaving the station walked through the bustling city streets to St Aldates and then down past the Town Hall to enter through the Visitors Gate, that leads to the south frontage of Christ Church and Christ Church Meadows beyond.

It was a beautiful, crisp sunny morning and the grounds although white with snow and ice were busy with tourists of many nationalities.I walked up to the southern frontage of the building and stood on the path looking at the honey coloured walls that were bathed in sunlight. The similarity to a cliff face was not lost on me and undoubtedly neither to the Black Redstart. 

The bare Virginia Creeper that the Black Redstart favoured is dead centre

Christ Church part of the University of Oxford

An area of the wall was partly covered by the spreading bare tentacle like branches of a Virginia Creeper and almost immediately, above the creeper, on a ledge, I saw a small movement. It was a bird and looking more closely I saw it was a small grey bird, and yes it was the Black Redstart. It was as simple and as easy as that.

I took out my camera and started taking images to my heart's content. No one took any notice of me presumably because they assumed I was just another tourist photographing the impressive frontage of Christ Church. No one else seemed to notice the tiny bird dwarfed by the towering walls and hardly conspicuous with its dull grey plumage as it crouched at ground level on the stones.  

When I had first discovered the Black Redstart it remained on the highest ledges but in a series of short flights soon descended to perch on the knots of dead leaves and withered flowers of the creeper. It was continuously active, looking for prey and also spent some time picking off small, very unappetising looking berries from the creeper. I guess with this cold weather and snow cover it was finding its  customary invertebrate prey hard to come by and was having to consume anything that remotely looked like sustenance. At least it was on the sun warmed stone and seemed, from what I could see, to be surviving alright. 

Slowly it worked its way downwards until it was on the ground at the base of the wall where it hopped along looking at the stones for anything to eat.

I was struck by how like a Robin it was in its behaviour. Bright eyed, bobbing and prinking its body, as it perched on the wall or ground, looking around for its next victim. Occasionally it would shiver its rust coloured tail in true redstart fashion. Overall it was dull grey, virtually featureless apart from a conspicuous buff eye ring and an orange rump, upper and under tail coverts and tail. The central tail feathers were dark brown so the orange in the tail was only visible when its tail was partially or fully spread.

Black Redstarts in this non descript plumage are notoriously hard to sex, it could be a female or a first winter male. Only a detailed examination in the hand would give a strong indication of sex and age and obviously that was not going to happen! 

I watched it happily going about its business as some Chinese tourists had their photo taken standing on the grass in front of it despite a sign stating 'Please Keep off the Grass'! I resisted the temptation to join them and get closer to the Black Redstart, although no official came to tell them to move back onto the path.

The Black Redstart commenced working its way back along the base of the wall, then flew up into the creeper, before, with a flick of its wings, it ascended back up onto a ledge and finally flew to the very top of the building as a Blackbird landed nearby and caused it obvious concern.

This was my cue to leave. What a very pleasant morning of birding in the heart of the City of Oxford.

Who would have thought it?