I went to Farmoor Reservoir this morning, where the wind was vicious and the light only very slightly less so, in search of a pair of Twite that rocked up there yesterday afternoon and were reported again this morning. On arrival it only took me a couple of minutes to establish that half an hour after the 8am report, a couple of joggers ran through the ground-feeding flock of pipits with which the Twite were hanging out, and put the entire group to flight. I was told that several birders who were watching the Twite at the time expressed robust opinions about this, and a frank exchange of views occurred – but recriminations didn’t bring the birds back, and extensive searches around the water’s edge in the interim hadn’t turned up any further sign of them.
So much for that.
Deprived of a bird I’d never photographed before, and therefore grumpy, I comfort-ate a humongous chocolate brownie, and then staggered around the reservoir perimeter in a vain attempt to work off the excess calories. There was very little about – even down at Pinkhill, the small wetland between Farmoor and the Thames, it seemed that most birds had gone off to seek shelter from the incoming storm, and the main reservoir was almost deserted. I even saw a Little Grebe attempting to jump out of the water onto the raised rim of a deep channel, which is very unusual behaviour because their legs are set too far back for them to be comfortable on land, but sadly for the photos I hoped to take it failed, fell back into the water, and instead swam into the channel, which was protected enough for the water there to be less choppy.
The only birds that seemed oblivious to the weather were the Cormorants, who were behaving entirely normally: that is, gathering in large argumentative groups on the pontoons, and jostling for position whenever things got too crowded. Every now and then one of them would get pushed off and would go for a quick swim before trying to get back on again, or would decide to go fishing or fly around the reservoir before coming back to rejoin the flock. Because there wasn’t much else going on I watched them for a while, and tracked this one as it came in from a flight and landed in the water.
