Sunday 6 December 2015

Ferruginous strikes again 6 years and 4 days after my last find

Having barely been on my patch recently, I was abundantly aware I was unlikely to find something good on my random 30 minute visits. So this afternoon, my wife said, "go on, you've been dying to get out" and despite a reluctance, I went, thinking I'll cover the 3 main lakes at the North end.

I arrived in the layby at Sandford and lifting my bins noticed a group of Pochard, thinking back to my conversation with Brian yesterday, about noticing an influx of Pochard and that led me to finding a male Ferruginous Duck in 2009.

So I raised my tripods legs, began scanning and immediately found this rather chestnut coloured duck asleep under what I refer to as the Little Egret tree.


It remained asleep, but I felt it was an obvious Ferruginous, then it did wake and pop it's head up for about 2 seconds, nice shape and bill detail.

Then as folks began to arrive it eventually woke up and began preening, revealing a BTO ring on it's left leg and some spots around the breast.


Then it jumped of the branch and swam around, Dave Rimes got some shots of it's underwing during a little flap and it seemed like we all felt it was a real and not hybrid individual.

A link here shows an identical underwing to that captured by David - http://ibc.lynxeds.com/photo/ferruginous-duck-aythya-nyroca/flock-circling-pond.

Now I've had time to update my records, I can also add that this bird was my 130th for my patch this year, so the 6th year on the trot I have reached the 130's. We now know it has vanished too, so identically to 2009, it was a one day bird..I suppose it could show up again, but doubt it will. I hope to put in some soon time to try and connect with that Firecrest and maybe find a Bittern at WSL?


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