I was heading down for my 30 minutes in the car park, when Richard called saying Geoff had a Spoonbill at Henley Road G.P.'s. So I went there instead, sadly it flew off, or out of sight and that was all I had time for.
Oxon is getting very good birds right now, Great White Egret, Yellow-browed Warbler and 4 Great Skua together last night at Farmoor.
Marek found the first autumn Pochard for DP this morning, so we are in a different league to Oxon!
October can be very good though and we are long overdue our first Yellow-browed Warbler and should that Spoonbill drop in, I'd be very happy after missing the May 14th 2007 birds.
We will hopefully see our annual Stonechat around the 11th to 14th and whilst it hasn't happened more than once winter thrush passage can also be accompanied by Hawfinch, but we should check for Ring Ouzel too.
With more time I'll compile a past October rarity list, one unrepeated species is Curlew Sandpiper 2nd Oct 1988, but we'll probably have to wait for that another year, so for now observations are that it is not a bad month for a passing Merlin in recent years.
I also had a Pochard on Sandford on Sep 27th so presumably an extra species for the Sep total? Also had Grey Wag and Parakeet that day. Don't know if there were any other Sep records of those?
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