Sunday 15 April 2018

Hoopoe with Bufflehead on the side

What a day. Was looking around Little Woodcote for migrants (a fall of Robins, 3 Swallow and a single Whitethroat) with Sid when news came in of a female Bufflehead on the Beddington North Lake. Kojak had found it while doing the WeBS. We presumed it was the escaped silver ringed female that has been doing the rounds- actually been following me round all my main patches- Otmoor, Staines and now Beddington. The gang confirmed it had a silver ring on the right leg. So Sid and I went to twitch the Bufflehead and while watching that I noticed a couple of crows mobbing something over the mound- a Hoopoe! Eventually the bird settled on the main island and a local twitch followed. 

This is the 4th official Hoopoe for the farmlands following singles on August 24th 1956, May 11th to 13th 1959 and April 21st 1968. There is also an unconfirmed report in 1972. Therefore this is the first record since 1968 - the first in 50 years!! A major local blocker. 

As it was a planned nature day with the boys today we spent the rest of the day processing the moth trap, listening to last night's nocturnal sounds and then went for a walk along the Wandle, where we met one of the local fisherman with a beautiful 4lb Brown Trout. 

A few goodies in the moth trap too. 

 Hoopoe in flight 
 Hoopoe on the deck 
 Hoopoe erect 
 First found being mobbed by crows 
 Female Bufflehead- a first for the farmlands (presumably Cat E) totally eclipsed by the Hoopoe 
Female Bufflehead- presumably the escaped female doing the rounds across the South of England. Silver ring on the right leg. 
 Early Thorn 
 Common Plume 
 Pale Mottled Willow
 Twin-spot Quaker 
 Agonopterix arenella (a local scarcity) 
 The Beddington boys
 Me and the boys in the lab 
 Sid's siblings in on the migrant hunt this morning 

4 comments:

Chris Townend (Jaffa) said...

Brilliant patch find Pete - It doesn’t get much better than a 50 year blocker!

Arjun Dutta said...

Incredible stuff - gutted to have missed it with school starting again tomorrow.
I was by the Woodcote this morning too - probably while you were Hoopoeing. The best I saw was Raven and Linnet. Argh!

Peter Alfrey said...

nice1 Jaffa.
I've only had Raven once up there Arjun- was it on the deck? Sid still needs it.

Arjun Dutta said...

No not on the deck - flyover getting mobbed by the other corvids. Headed NE pretty quickly.
Unlikely but hoping the Hoopoe hangs around...