A Peregrine Interlude - 19th May 2026

With a couple of hours to spare before meeting a friend in Chipping Norton and with my camera in the  car I spontaneously decided to renew acquaintance with a pair of Peregrines that frequent an ancient church just over the Oxfordshire border. I went to see them in May last year ,and hoped that it would be a similar pleasurable experience this time.

It was a morning of blustery wind and showers but thankfully the rain stayed away as I drew up by the green in the older, more attractive part of the picturesque village and its twelth century church.

Stepping out of the car I surveyed the tower of the church but could see no sign of any Peregrines so decided to walk around the chuch to survey all four sides of its substantial presence. On the north side I found what I was looking for in the form of a male Peregrine perched on a stone gargoyle.

It was not that obvious as it had its grey back turned towards me which to a great extent merged with the lichen encrusted, crumbling grey and brown stonework of the church tower and the gargoyle on which it was perched. I also noticed it had obviously endured one of the heavy rain showers I had driven through before I arrived, as its breast feathers were dishevilled and spiky due to becoming soaking wet.

I took some images and then wandered around the church to take its picture from other angles while the Peregrine followed my progress with its huge lustrous dark eyes but showed little concern and why should it, perched high and secure on its elevated perch on the tower. It must also be well used to people passing by or entering the church.

It flew to a tree opposite, in the walled grounds of the Manor House which is almost as old as the church and perched high on a broken branch to preen and linger but the wind was troublesome in this more exposed position and it soon returned to its gargoyle, situated out of the wind on the north side of the church tower

 

It was remarkable how the many Jackdaws nesting in the ventilation inlets of the tower seemed unperturbed by its presence and carried on, to and fro, feeding their noisy young in their nests. Woodpigeons too showed little concern perching close to the apparently indifferent falcon. Maybe they and the Jackdaws were aware the Peregrine had eaten and for the time being they were in no danger. However a black wing tip poking up from behind another gargoyle indicated that a Jackdaw had fallen victim to the falcon and others would likely be suffering the same fate in the near future.As if proof were needed, on reviewing my photos I noticed its lower breast feathers were stained with blood, no doubt from a very recent victim. 

Note the blood on the Peregrine's breast feathers

In a brief absence of the Peregrine I saw a smaller falcon fly up to perch high on a ledge of the church tower and on going to investigate, it was as I suspected a male Kestrel. It had a worm which it consumed and then departed which is probably just as well as Peregrines are known to kill and eat smaller raptors such as kestrels.

Male Kestrel

The Peregrine returned and resumed its vigil on the gargoyle and all was as before; the Jackdaws busy feeding their young, the Woodpigeons blundering around the church and surrounding graveyard yews and the Peregrine silently watching - and waiting.

I spent around an hour, undisturbed and left to my own devices in this quiet and pleasant corner of rural England  with only a passing villager stopping to enquire after 'their' Peregrines. The hands of the ancient clock on the church tower pointed to twelve noon. It was time to go.

My Local Grey Wagtails - 12th May 2026

At my local Farmoor Reservoir there are at least three pairs of Grey Wagtails breeding and this year they have commenced early and the first broods are already out of the nest and catching flies and invertebrates on the concrete banks of the reservoir.

Traditionally associated with fast flowing, rocky streams in uplands GreyWagtails have spread to slower moving lowland rivers and streams such as here in Oxfordshire and are not uncommon.

I see one or more Grey Wagtails virtually every day throughout the year when I visit the reservoir and confess that I often grant them only a cursory glance, especially in the winter months when they are not in their brighter breeding plumage. 

However, for the last two years I have given them more attention as a pair have bred at the end of the reservoir's central causeway, their nest hidden below the metal covering over the inlet for water from the nearby River Thames to be pumped into the reservoir. Grey Wagtails invariably like to be near water and seem, at Farmoor anyway, to be partial to placing their nests on inaccessible ledges in the dark recesses of man made structures over water and of which, courtesy of Thames Water there is no shortage at Farmoor!

The location of this particular Grey Wagtail nest at the end of the causeway and where many people pass close by all day has meant the birds have become relatively confiding.and consequently granted a great opportunity to observe them close to and more to the point, linger awhile to appreciate and record their breeding activity and understated beauty. 

The male in particular, on closer examination is very handsome with a black chin and white moustaches and eyebrows, contrasting with a bright yellow breast and undertail coverts.

His breast glows lemon yellow shading slightly paler on flanks and belly and then becoming rich buttercup yellow on his undertail coverts. His mate is a paler version, possessing the same colours but her plumage is muted and less defined and she lacks the strong face pattern of the male. 

Male Grey Wagtail

On a recent occasion I stood slightly back from the metal grill covering the inlet and watched the two birds coming and going, slipping below the grill to their hidden nest and its young or perching on the surrounding railings which has given me a multitude of opportunities to watch and photograph them.

The birds were constantly coming and going, the female with beakfuls of flies she had gathered from the reservoir edge, while the male perched on the railings and seemed less inclined to make as great a contribution as his mate to feeding the young.

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Female Grey Wagtail with food for her young

Compared to the more numerous Pied Wagtails they are supremely elegant, due in no short measure  to their very long tail which they bounce up and down so vigorously it is as if the whole of its hind body is in motion. Truly if you take a closer look at them they will not fail to impress with both their colours and slim, elegant presence

Sometimes I have been told by non birding passers by on the reservoir that they have seen a Yellow Wagtail but often I have to disappoint them by asking if the bird had a grey back and if  they confirm it did I tell them the bird they have seen was a Grey Wagtail. A look of confusion comes over them and they say 

But it was bright yellow

I reply 

Yes, a Grey Wagtail does have bright yellow on its breast and undertail but it has a grey upperbody  hence the name Grey Wagtail. A Yellow Wagtail is much brighter yellow all over - believe me.

 

After watching the two wagtails I walked down to my favourite Pinkhill Lock, where one can cross the river using the walkway on Thames Water's metal barrier that controls the flow of river  water in times of flood. There I discovered another pair of Grey Wagtails, again with a nest below the metal structure, hidden on a ledge above the onrushing water.

  

I could just about hear a plaintive repeated alarm call above the noise of the water and it was the devil's own job to locate it but finally I found the  originator, a male Grey Wagtail perched in a nearby willow, his yellow underparts complementing perfectly the yellow, pollen heavy catkins of the willow so that he was almost as one with the tree in which he was perched.  

          

Night Rafting on Arran - 10th May 2026

As is our custom each Spring, we recently spent two weeks on our favourite Isle of Arran in our favourite house that lies right on a rocky seashore that is but a few metres below a wall that guards the house from the sea.

Before us is nothing but the wide seascape of Kilbrannan Sound and across the sea looms the impressive undulating hills and distant mountains of the Kintyre Peninsula and the Mull of Kintyre. 

Below on the rocky beach Common Gulls are nesting in a loose colony while gleaming white Gannets plunge spectacularly from on high into the sea. Amongst the gulls a pair of Ringed Plovers have chosen to nest. 

I hold little hope for their nest being successful as for much of the time the parent birds are not incubating the eggs but trying to distract the nearby gulls from discovering the nest and devouring its precious contents. Even if the young hatch they will inevitably be discovered and consumed by the gulls but for now the nest somehow survives and the plovers continue instinctively to indulge in frantic distraction displays, feigning broken wings and severe injury. The gulls are indifferent and ignore them even when they are only feet away.

The Ringed Plover's distraction display, pretending to be injured

April and May are good months for watching the local and not so local wildlife on Arran. A steady passage of migrant Whimbrels arrive on its shores to rest and feed before moving further northwards to their breeding areas which can be anywhere from Shetland and Orkney to Iceland, The Faeroes Scandinavia and north western Russia. 

Some even fly non stop from their wintering areas in West Africa to Iceland covering a distance of between 3900-5000km in six days but others make a stop in north western Europe, possibly to replenish their energy reserves after a long flight from Africa and to put them in prime condition for the breeding season ahead.

Whimbrels

Not a day passed that I did not see small groups of Whimbrel feeding or resting on the rocky shore by the house. I rather like Whimbrels, a smaller more classy cousin of our resident Curlew with the added romance of coming from afar, West Africa to be precise. By the time they reach Arran they have accomplished the major and most dangerous part of their long flight across the Bay of Biscay and up the Irish Sea to stop on this beautiful romantic island for a brief spell of recuperation before completing the last part of their epic journey.

One particular Whimbrel caught on the south coast of Arran on the 30th April 2017 and fitted with a yellow leg flag bearing the inscription A2 has faithfully returned for the last nine years to the same Arran shore in virtually the same week as when it was originally trapped. Even more remarkable, on the 24th November 2022 it was seen wintering on the coast at Bank d'Arguin in Mauritania, West  Africa. 

Their distinctive, seven note tittering call alerts you to their presence as maybe a dog walker on the nearby beach disturbs their rest and sometimes a bird will indulge in a wild and wonderful sequence of notes, an evocative  courting song, as if it cannot contain itself until it arrives at its breeding haunts.

But most of all I look forward to seeing a spectacular bird that never fails to cause me to look in awe nd admiration at its beauty and magnificent presence. I speak of the Great Northern Diver. The sea off Arran is a favoured wintering habitat from September to May for this impressive bird so I know I am not going to be disappointed and to add to my sense of anticipation I know that most will be in full summer plumage.

I am familiar with them in winter around the coastlines of northern Britain and even on our local inland reservoir in Oxfordshire but always in dull grey, non breeding plumage.Not so on Arran where they are transformed to a wonder of black and white chequering with a black and white striped 'vicar's collar' around their neck and eyes the colour of rubies, glistening in a huge head and with a bill of matching black. 

Being so close to the sea we can sit by the wall and watch them as they come in close to the shore hunting butterfish, flatfish and crustaceans in the shallows and where they do not even have to dive but rather snorkel with head either submerged or just above the water, in order to seize their prey.

The bay that our house looks out onto is called Drumadoon and is a particularly favoured haunt of these divers and where I have never failed to see less than half a dozen every morning, each bird cruising over the sea in stately fashion and always alone

This year we were blessed with glorious weather and the sea, especially in the evening, would become almost glass like with no wind and sunsets to rival anywhere in the world.The divers can become quite vocal in these conditions and at this  time of day as the world here seems to fall into quiescence and reflection, their haunting other worldly cries come from far out in the Sound, touching some primaeval nerve within me that brings a confusing onset of emotion, thrilling but also unsettling.

In  the late evening, in such conditions the divers can congregate into loose groups, a behaviour that has only relatively been discovered and described as  'night rafting' and is likely to be for protection and energy conservation. Although they feed alone during the day, the divers gather in small groups that join others to eventually form larger groups that spend the night in an area well offshore. This behaviour is recognised as being crucial for over 20% of the Great Northern population that originate from their breeding areas in Greenland and Iceland and spend the winter around Britain's northwestern coasts 

I was fortunate to observe this behaviour on the evening of the 30th of April.

As the light faded between eight and nine o' clock and the sun set over Kintyre I watched a group of eight Great Northerns swim past in the middle of the Kilbrannan Sound, heading out to the more open deeper sea. A short while later another group of eleven were slowly swimming in the same direction to join other small parties of fellow divers. They do not feed but swim slowly with obvious purpose to a destination known only to them. These congregations are quite distinctive on the smooth water and I watched them until they merged into the fading distance and I could see them no more 

In total I counted thirty seven Great Northern Divers.

Turning away to the west I watched the last of the departing sun's yellow orb sink behind Kintyre, the sky flame orange that was almost imperceptibly turning to a gentle rose pink above the island's topography, now become indistinct and magical in a technicolour dusk. 

The composer Benjamin Britten and poet W. H. Auden combined to put one of Auden's poems to music and within which is contained a memorable but melancholy line from the poem which goes

Love's all over the mountains where the beautiful go to die

And so it felt on Arran at that moment. 

A Sedge on the Edge - April 2026

Six years ago I wrote of a very showy Sedge Warbler see here  making its summer home in a neglected area of scrub at the western end of my local Farmoor Reservoir and almost  inevitably the bird was christened Reg the Sedge. Sadly he sang his heart out to no avail and to my knowledge remained unmated and unfulfilled for the entire summer.

This year as always, I revisited this half forgotten area known as Pinkhill, an idyllic corner by the sweeping curve of the Isis, where the nearby lock keeper's house guards the lock and the long boats moored alongside banks thick with comfrey and flag iris, in a quiet backwater below towering green billows of full leafed horse chestnut trees.

l rarely encounter much human activity apart from the occasional dog walker and that is why I like it here, abandoned, neglected, left to nature and as a consequence immensely attractive to birdlife, especially at this time of year. Threatened by ' recreational improvement' with the creation of ponds and even a pond for dogs to especially jump into, a complete nonsense, as if the dogs and their owners would confine themselves to one specific pond, the folly of this exercise was pointed out to Thames Water who own the land and thankfully the plan was abandoned.

I fail to comprehend this desire, however well meaning for tidying up areas such as Pinkhill. It is as if any such neglected area cannot be left to fend for itself. Leave it be, there is already enough closely mown grass on  the nearby reservoir banks.  

The Jesuit priest and Oxford Scholar, Gerald Manley Hopkins wrote a poem about a burn in Scotland called Inversnaid,  the final two lines being: - O let them be left. wildness and wet: Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. Exactly!

It is always exciting to anticipate the arrival of the first migrant warblers of Spring and from early March onwards I visit Pinkhill almost daily to seek sight or sound of any new arrivals. Common Chiffchaffs and Blackcaps are always in the vanguard, closely followed by the Willow Warbler and its wistful song but it is the arrival of Sedge Warblers and Common Whitethroats that are the most keenly anticipated, at least for me anyways.

For some days I saw and heard nothing until, in the last week of March on an unexceptional Wednesday of persistent cold wind but pleasant sunshine I heard the unmistakeable scratchy jumble of notes that is the song of a Sedge Warbler. It sang quietly, not at full volume, hidden deep within a tangle of hawthorn and rampant bramble. Although completely invisible it was literally feet from me as I listened enthralled at the first Sedge Warbler to arrive this year at Farmoor. 

The day after it had moved on but now I knew it would not be long before many more would follow The days passed and in the second week of April the wind dropped overnight and the next morning Pinkhill was inundated with the songs of Sedge Warblers.The previously silent acres of scrub were transformed by a cacophony of sound as Sedge Warblers sang from what felt like every bush and ditch.

They had arrived! 

I stood in the early morning sunshine and absorbed this discordant chorus of natural sound. I tried to imagine the night before, as the warblers tiny forms dropped from the night sky into the still dark and waiting habitat that would be their summer home and at first light proclaim possession of a small patch of Oxfordshire, triumphant and rejoicing that they had successfully made the long journey from Africa and proclaiming their presence to one and all. 

I try to discern the mimickery included in their complex song, the notes of which are invariably delivered at high speed.They always incorporate other bird calls to supplement their own song and amid the jumble of notes the calls of other species from both their summer and winter homes are faithfully reproduced. Some of these calls are easily identified. For instance the alarm call of a Swallow is a favourite but there are many other calls that vary from individual to individual Sedge Warbler and often include unfamiliar sounds from species only found in the warbler's winter home in Africa.

Look closely and you will see Sedge Warblers are an attractive little bird of varying shades of rufous and buff with prominent long white eyebrows, a black striped head and an upperbody of light brown streaked with darker lines whilst its underparts are clear and paler, almost white. Its entire appearance replicating the stalks, stems and dead reeds it finds so desirable to inhabit.

In their ardour they  sing enthusiastically from anywhere. Low in riparian diches, often in bushes too and also will climb up the dead stalks of reeds or umbellifers to boldly give voice in the open, innate caution temporarily abandoned. Their white throats swell  and their bills open wide to display a fiery orange interior as they pour forth their song.

Occasionally in extremis they hurl themselves skywards, performing an aerial jig, seemingly unable to control the surge of energy that grips their tiny bodies, throwing themselves around in the sky and singing in an  exuberant brief abandon before, on spread wings, returning to earth.

It does not last long this initial frenzy of activity and song, energised by competing with fellow Sedge Warblers. However for the first two or three weeks of their arrival a torrent of song greets me each early morning but once they have found a mate they fall silent and become secretive and it will all be over until next year.