Another day of soaring temperatures, a shrug of the shoulders as I told myself to get used to it.This is probably the new normal but alarmingly no one seems too worried about what it signifies for the future.My hosta collection (all in pots) certainly are suffering as the leaves of some crinkle and brown at the edges due to the heat and relentless sunshine.I have run out of shady corners to transfer them to so they will have to make the best of it and hang on until a break in the weather.
The heat today, already well on the rise at around nine thirty in the morning had me mulling over where to go that would be more bearable.My first thought was my local Farmoor Reservoir as there is usually some wind there to cool a fevered brow. I had visited the reservoir yesterday in the mid afternoon and although uncomfortably hot there was a strong breeze from the east. I was looking for dragonflies that have colonised the algal bloom that has arisen along the water's edge of the smaller basin of the reservoir.To my pleasure I found not only the usual Black tailed Skimmers sunning themselves on the shimmering concrete but a much scarcer male Lesser Emperor, that zipped back and fore for a minute before disappearing out over the water.
This morning I decided to repeat the exercise and with the added incentive of a Sandwich Tern, a scarce passage migrant to the reservoir, being reported as present earlier although I felt it could well have moved on by the time I arrived.
The reservoir car park was already filling with cars as folk arrived to stroll the reservoir's concrete surrounds, sit outside by the water at the cafe with a coffee or tea or participate in paddle boarding and yachting activities. I made my way to the central causeway to look for the dragonflies and the tern but had little joy. There was no immediate sign of the tern nor any scarce or rare dragonflies.
I commenced walking back along the causeway to where a number of Black headed Gulls and Common Terns were perched on the guard railings of the Valve Tower in the smaller basin, a location they favour as it is inaccessible to the public and they are consequently left undisturbed. Maybe the Sandwich Tern was amongst them? I would never know unless I checked and with only bins and camera I needed to get closer.
I met Simon heading up the causeway who had also come to look for the tern and had his scope with him.We stopped to chat about the tern and where it might be and then he checked the gulls and terns on the valve tower. He scoped a tern perched at the right hand end of the line of gulls and bingo there was the Sandwich Tern, perched contentedly, whiling away the morning with the gulls and smaller terns.
We walked back down the causeway and then part way around the perimeter track to get closer to admire this unusual visitor to the reservoir. It was an adult but a bit early to be seen here and I could only speculate that it was a failed breeder making its way to spend the winter in West Africa although with the weather the way it currently is there was hardly any hurry to move further south. I noted a small metal ring on its right leg, placed there by a member of a national ringing scheme no doubt but it was not possible to read the inscription so I would never be able to trace where it may have come from or at least where it was ringed .
This being a Saturday the reservoir was busy and the paddle boarders were out in force on the smaller basin near the valve tower. Inevitably two came too close to the perched birds and they flew, including the Sandwich Tern which ascended high in the sky to circle above the reservoir for quite some time.
Two things can happen in such circumstances.The tern could fly onwards never to be seen again or might come back to where it was disturbed from and fortunately in this case it did the latter and resumed its place with the gulls and terns on the guard rail of the tower.
I rather like Sandwich Terns. Big and brash, they are highly sociable birds and like nothing better than to patrol the sea with others of their kind, often to be encountered in trios.Why this should be so I have no idea but it is quite a marked behavioural trait at the time of their Spring migration.
In the company of their own kind they are incapable of remaining silent. calling loudly and incessantly to one another like excited children, the harsh calls so redolent of spring and summer at the coast.With a long, yellow tipped black stilletto of a bill and shaggy black cap they have a rakish air about them and there is little not to like, especially when gracing an inland reservoir which today with its blue waters and sun, was doing its utmost to replicate the tern's African winter home.
It was disturbed once more by the paddle boarders and this time rising heavenwards seemed to have gone for good. We waited quite some time, anticipating its eventual return but there was no sign of it. Simon headed for home and I went elsewhere, looking for dragonflies along the causeway but on my return from the causeway I checked the valve tower just in case and there it was once more, loafing in the shade and it was still there when I departed the reservoir at 1pm.
Incidentally we never saw it show any interest in feeding although there would be plenty of potential food for it in the form of small fish in the reservoir.
I was minded to go home but as I got to my car Peter called telling me he had spent his morning at BBOWT's Warburg Reserve at Bix on the border of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, looking for helleborines but while there had whiled away two hours in the bird hide and had seen one or more Hawfinches coming to drink from the small pond in front of the hide..
It was a tempting prospect as Hawfinches are not a bird you can get close to everyday, being a bird that is elusive and shy to the extreme. I assesssed the situation and as Bix was only forty minutes away, on an impulse I headed for the Warburg Reserve which is tucked away at the bottom of a steep valley in The Chilterns and accessed by a narrow, pot holed single track lane that seems to go on forever. The kind of lane that makes you wonder if you have taken the wrong route but eventually brings you to a small visitor centre and secluded car park.
It is quiet down here amongst the trees, the valley bottom dominated by steeply rising hillsides on either side, the air drowsy and windless, being so deep in the valley. I walked a short way up a track to turn onto a less than obvious dirt path that leads to a small cramped bird hide almost sunk into the ground, so low that when you enter, it is into almost total darkness until the viewing slats are opened,granting a view out to the pond, only feet away and almost at eye level.
Cool and dark in the cramped, claustraphobic hide, there is no problem with overheating and I sat quietly awaiting the birds coming to drink from the pond which must be a welcome, ever more scarce source of refreshment for them in this prolonged period of drought.
My aim was to see one of the Hawfinches that Peter had seen earlier this morning.The peace and quiet of what had now become a soporiphic vigil in the early afternoon made me drowsy but every so often the scene was enlivened by an avian visitor, as Bullfinches mainly and Marsh Tits too, regularly came and departed and two stripey, olive green juvenile Siskins were a nice surprise
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| Bullfinches |
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| Marsh Tit |
But for ninety minutes there was not an inkling of any Hawfinches until a bulkier looking finch flew in and landed in the branches of a small hazel at the far side of the pond.
Could it be? There was no way of knowing until the bird revealed itself.
Seconds later it dropped to the ground amongst the blades of grass, A male Hawfinch at last. His plumage flickering with light and shade as the sun cast shadows across the woodland floor.
A pleasing, harmonious amalgamation of pastel shades of pale chestnut, brownish pink and chocolate brown with a prominent gash of white across its wings, the Hawfinch stood four square on the ground and surveyed the damp margin of the pond and drank from a trickle of muddy water.A minute, more or less passed and then he was gone, back into the mystery and security of the trees above..
I had waited over two hours but got my reward.
Hawfinches are never easy to see but when you do the sense of achievement is all the more fulfilling.
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