Monday 4 October 2010

FERRUGINOUS DUCK in West Yorkshire

 Wintersett Reservoir, Wintersett, West Yorkshire - October 2010
Photo by Adam Archer

After a search of the southern end of this reservoir on Saturday afternoon, I had failed to locate FERRUGINOUS DUCK that had been been present the day before.  In fact all I had seen during the pretty depressing visit was a Red-breasted Merganser over the road at Park Lake.  After a two day absence I was thankful that the bird was located again, especially as I was only twenty-five minutes away from site at the time.

Despite the time of year, the weather was more in keeping with a spring day in May as we meandered our way through the sun dappled woodland to the north-west corner of the reservoir.  Upon finding a suitable viewing area and after a quick scan through my bins it was not too long before I managed to pick out a handsome drake FERRUGINOUS DUCK (281).  The scarce visitor from Eastern Europe continued to show well, it not a little distant amongst the Tufted Duck, Common Pochard and Common Coot until the lure of another local rarity proved too much.       


Above: adult male FERRUGINOUS DUCK (top bird) with male Common Pochard (bottom bird) - Wintersett Reservoir, West Yorkshire.
Photo by Adam Archer

Above: adult male FERRUGINOUS DUCK (middle bird) with two male Common Pochard - check out the snowy white ass!

2 comments:

  1. Tut tut. At the start of this year, a fine drake Ferruginous Duck was present in mighty Staffordshire, much nearer to Polesworth than Wakefield. What's all that about? ;o)

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  2. Rich, I realise that mate. I also messed up on a Worcestershire GLOSSY IBIS too. The problem lay in the fact that I was bedridden for the first two weeks of the year with some kind of man-flu/hepatitis/AIDS type viral infection. I superficially resembled a Freddie Mercury x Mark Fowler hybrid.

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