Badger.

I have missed some really good birds recently due to being tied up visiting other places, I prefer to go to quieter sites that other birders don't cover and I personally get more of a kick finding my own rarities, although in all truthfulness finding commonplace nature is my biggest turn on if I find it doing well, unfortunately many things are increasingly doing less well.
My garden is host to a Blackbird with a white flash through its forehead and the rather obvious nickname of Badger, this bird is feeding youngsters made obvious by its frequent visits to claim any titbits thrown on the lawn, also a pair of Robins have reared a brood in a nest built in Ivy close to my front door . Greenfinches have raised a brood close by as the young are coming to my feeders and its close relative the Bullfinch was spotted on a walk over part of my late Dads farm between Challow Station and Sparsholt where I saw Peacock,Common Blue, Holly Blue and Small Tortoiseshell Butterflies.
The now virtually dried out Shellingford Pit is a local wildlife disaster due to the draining in the near vicinity by gravel extraction. This site was building up to be an important refuge for a wide variety of Dragonflies but big business has killed them off. The Cinnabar Moth and a pair of English Partridges was all I found there. Thank goodness the plant life is still interesting and presently still holding on.
The Oxon Feather.

Badger the Blackbird

Greenfinch

Grey Partridge

Cinnabar Moth

Deer browsing.

Peacock

Bullfinch

A view from the farm I grew up on.

Tom Bedford Rocks!

At last nights OOS AGM, Stalwart of the birders curry evenings Tom Bedford gave a superb talk on his previous birding patch at Cuddeston. His talk included a most interesting appraisal of the Green Belt and its failings and also the rarer birds he had managed to "turn up" on his mainly intensively farmed locality. My thanks to Tom for this most entertaining and informative insight into his birding life and if he has more to say and I think he has I am hopeful that he will be talking to us again.              The Feather.

Take A Tip.

Rambled along the road that runs from The Blowing Stone to Seven Barrows, this road is usually good for Corn Bunting and yesterday it also turned up several pairs of Orange Tip Butterflies.
My computer has been on the blink due to my cleaning the keypad that had become dirty, overdone things a bit and a new keypad has resulted in a spend of 79 Quid .
Please make a point of coming along to the Oxford Ornithological Society Annual General Meeting when our own Tom Bedford of 'Birders night curry fame' will be giving a talk and our chairman Alan Larkman will also be talking , probably giving an update on the state of play of our Tree Sparrow project and an insight into the City Farm Project.
The Feather.

Boring Barry.

With the marvellous recent finds of Wagtails in the county I am afraid I will be posting - not lesser fare- but more mundane fare. These birds are quite common in our vicinity but if things continue as they are that may not be the case in the not too distant future. At least there is a growing revulsion against the blatant abuse of our wildlife personified by the old man of British wildlife film making David Attenborough to the Norwegian schoolgirl and the many who turned out to object in London to the awful inaction to deal with plastics and global warming. I sometimes feel that if only my birding friends were able to get as excited about doing something to register their horror at the appalling state of our countryside as they are to jump on a plane to see a rare bird we might get more done.

YellowhammerCoot Young

DeerNuthatch

Linnet

Holly Blue