I’d barely reached Stow-on-the-Wold this morning, en route to Farmoor Reservoir, when I found myself driving through a heavy downpour. Madness, I thought. I should turn back. But there was a slightly brighter line of sky visible just above the far horizon, and anyway, I didn’t get where I am today by being sensible, so I ploughed on, and just as I reached Farmoor village the sky lifted. Vindicated.
I walked up from the car park onto the reservoir edge, thinking that it might be a good idea to log some fast steps around Farmoor Two before going for coffee, then glanced towards the south-west and saw a solid wall of weather heading towards me, fast, across the water. I turned immediately and scuttled for the café, which was less than thirty metres away, but by the time I’d wrenched the door open and fallen through it I was already pretty wet. The place was full of people who were visibly pleased to have got in there sooner than I’d managed, some of whom were now making their way to the windows to film the thunderstorm on their phones as it rolled across us.
My weather apps suggested that the rain would be with us for an hour, but forty minutes later the sun was back out, and I decided it was safe to set off across the causeway. Chats with a few birders as I went told me where best to look for the single remainer from the group of Black Terns I’d been hoping to see, and just to be sure I’d taken heed the bird itself flew past me a couple of times, though too close and too fast for my reactions, or indeed for my camera settings, in light that was already plunging again. Luckily there’s a bird hide half way across the causeway, and I reached it several seconds before the next storm struck. A second photographer arrived a few minutes later, having been less fortunate, and we sat together for about the next half hour as the rain came and went, and – apparently completely unfazed by any amount of weather – so did the Black Tern.
When the sun next came out I decided to press on to the hide at Pinkhill Meadow, where I’d been told there were both Common and Green Sandpipers, but I didn’t even make it to the end of the causeway before I felt the first tentative drops of the next approaching downpour, so back I went at a rapid clip and into the causeway hide, where there were now two other damp photographers. And there we sat for another half hour, snatching shots of the Black Tern whenever it came within range, while I mentally worked on some extra verses for The Cat in the Hat, and idly wondered from time to time what happens if a saturated wooden bird hide gets struck by lightning.
When the sun next emerged I decided that I’d probably had my fill of Farmoor Reservoir for one day – and certainly of its weather – so I headed quickly back to the car, my heated seat, and a very welcome flask of coffee. When I arrived home and discovered that in my absence R had emptied another bit of the garage, rehoming the coal that was left for us (twenty five years ago) by our predecessor, I felt pretty guilty at the thought of him doing all that work while I was out having so much…. fun.
