Oxfordshire - 19 Feb 2011

Well what do you do on a wet Saturday in the week when your employer is in need to make 10% cost savings and you find you come into those cost savings, a) sulk and slowly get drunk or b) go to look at an Oriental Turtle Dove, visiting a town that you once used to work in as a young naive 18 yer old who found it all too boring - stupidity of youth - all those Oriental Turtle Doves I missed over those years! What a lovely part of the world and I ended up working in London - fool. No back garden bird feeder views to be had, but a decent enough view through the scope while it was sat in the trees at the back of the house behind the old mill. A visit to a very pleasant cafe in the town centre that was not there in 1977 and off for the hell of it to Rushy Common to see the American Wigeon, visiting some of the old villages around Chippy to see how things have changed over 20 years. Some seemed larger or my memory is just poor. Rushy Common duly provided the male American Wigeon and two red Smew, plus a Peregrine. Back at home a quick check of the Waxwings in Iver village where 25 odd were still present and seen to come down to feed on berry bushes outside the doctors surgery but it is not a catch able location - sadly.