Peevish

I was feeling jaded and peevish this morning, and I only managed to overcome an almost unconquerable desire to stay tucked up in bed all day with a good book* by throwing myself bodily into some clothes, scooping up all my gear, and marching out to the car. I decided that Farmoor would at least get me some steps and some birds, and I hoped - though not with much confidence - that one of these might be the Black Redstart that was seen there yesterday. Within five miles of leaving home I was questioning the wisdom of heading for Oxfordshire, because the Tupperware lid over the Vale turned out to be resting on the top of the Cotswold scarp, and I suddenly found myself driving through it. But the fog might lift, I thought, as I went further east.

It didn't lift, though it was thinner at Farmoor than it had been around Burford, and the Black Redstart was nowhere to be seen. Not that it would have had to go more than a few metres to become indistinguishable: there was a flock of starlings sitting on the roof of the water treatment plant where the Redstart was seen yesterday, and I only managed to identify them by the noise they were making.

Steps though. And coffee. And cake. And, on my second trip across the causeway that divides the two halves of the reservoir, this juvenile Cormorant. 

It's common for the Cormorants at Farmoor to stand around on the sloping edge of the reservoir to dry their wings, especially if all the buoys and pontoons they favour are already occupied, but they're quite nervous birds and don't like to be approached by humans, so they generally launch themselves into the water as you approach. I'd seen this one, which was drying off next to the causeway hide, from quite a distance away, and I walked towards it quietly on the far side of the causeway, and then doubled back when I knew I'd passed it. I still expected it to leave when it saw me, but I edged towards it slowly and very close to the wall of the hide, and that seemed to be enough to keep it calm.

The fact that it's unusual to manage to be so close to a Cormorant is enough to make this my photo of the day - at least in the absence of a Redstart - but it's also interesting because this appears to be an individual of the European race Phalacrocorax carbo sinensis. When I posted a shot of one of the Evesham birds recently I explained that you can tell the difference by the angle of the back edge of the yellow facial patch, relative to the line of the jaw. That bird had an angled patch, which made it a native Phalacrocorax carbo carbo, but in this juvenile the patch is very square. The only note of caution I'd sound is that I don't know for sure if the facial patch stays the same shape through into adulthood, but I don't see why it shouldn't. 


* My good book was The Fine Art of Invisible Detection by Robert Goddard, which I've now finished, and loved. Happily there's a sequel, called The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction.