Last night I received the following photos from Richard Thewlis of the BTO of a bird taken in a Chipping Norton garden during the snowy period before Christmas, by BTO GardenBirdwatch participant, John Dunleavy. They clearly show a 1st winter Oriental Turtle Dove of the race orientalis, as Richard had thought. The bird was present on 15th,16th and 18th December 2010 but has not been seen since. The tiny garden it visited is not viewable but the large trees it rested in can be seen from Foxfield and Fox Close. It was looked for today with no joy but I guess it could easily still be in the area. There is a free car park off Albion Street.
More details on the bird's discovery can be found at:
Obviously this is the first record of OTD for Oxfordshire. It's about the eighth record for Britain but the first ever of the nominate race. Oxon scores again!
It would be good to get the whole town checked out over the coming days but it may well remain the one that got away.
Parkin & Knox (2010) says that of 8 individuals in GB, 3 were orientalis, 3 were meena and 2 were not identified to subspecies.
ReplyDelete...... and...a big thankyou to our quality county recorder who has spent the best part of the past two days driving round Oxon sorting out interesting Redpolls and getting the full story and the facts behind this latest amazing addition to the county list.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree Nic!
ReplyDeleteIndeed... Nice 1 Ian.
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