Well, another week has gone by and the floods still show no sign of receding. In fact they're now way past the end of Burgess Field any may well be lapping at the edges of Wolvercote. To be honest I've only been out twice this week - it's just such hard work when the floods are like that and the rewards have been pretty scant of late. I was supposed to be leading a guided walk around the Meadow on Saturday for the Abingdon Naturalists though in the end it was cancelled due to the the state of the floods and the forecast latest in a long line of storms.
As fas as what's around at present the two SHELDUCK are still about, though the REDSHANK seem finally to have been pushed off their regular roosting tree which is now underwater. GOOSANDER are also a regular feature on the floods and there are plenty of duck around, mostly Wigeon though strangely the Pintail seem to have moved on. The gull roost continues to disappoint both with the poor numbers and the distant views. A KINGFISHER was loitering along the bank on Friday, peering intently into the shallow water right by the bank. I expect that it's really struggling in current conditions to find any fishable water. Two STOCK DOVES were in their regular tree just north of the Perch on Wednesday and a PEREGRINE gave nice fly-by views as it put up the gull roost though didn't seem to make much of an effort with any of the birds. Finally, Liam Langley reported the
WATER RAIL still squealing away in the Trap Grounds on Saturday as well as a SNIPE in Burgess Field.
Struggling Kingfisher
I've not had any luck with hearing any Little Owls so far this year
despite keeping an ear out for them up past the Perch. In terms of what we still need for the year list there's still Pheasant and Buzzard to get though the former has probably been pushed off further afield by the floods and the latter often doesn't get seen until things start to warm up a little
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