Tuesday 30th April - Day of the Duck

With being away at the end of this week, I was hoping to see a Pomarine Skua on the annual spring passage. The window is quite short normally spanning 3-4 weeks at the end of April and start of May and seeing them is partly wind-dependent with ideal conditions being a brisk SE wind, although they can also be seen on a light E or NE, but generally anything westerly is a no-hoper. Several had been reported last week when I was in Portugal in ideal wind conditions.

I arrived early and started a sea-watch, the wind was from the North-East but was due to swing round to South East by the end of the morning. A few Bar-tailed Godwits and Common Scoter were seen early and a slow trickle of Sandwich Terns, Common Terns and Little Terns but in no great numbers. An Arctic Skua flew through and a Great Skua lingered offshore raising hopes of the start of birds moving. However, other than Common Scoter which seemed to be passing with reasonable frequency there was no pickup in other birds. 

A bit of excitement ensued when at 6.40am a report of a probable Black Scoter had been seen passing Portland Bill. Scoters are quick flyers (35mph +) so we estimated that it would be anywhere between 2 hrs 15 and 2 hrs 45 for it to reach Selsey. The other factor would be which route around the Isle of Wight it would take. If it went the English Channel route then the chances are it would miss Selsey completely,  we had to hope it took the Solent route and then was still close enough to identify. The distinguishing feature of a male Black Scoter is an enlarged bill knob which is more yellow than orange, compared to a marginally smaller Common Scoter which has a flatter bill which is more orange than yellow, not a lot to go on but in good light and a close enough flock it should be identifiable.

Around 9.25am someone called that they had a Scoter flock land on the sea slightly to the west of where we were looking and there was an interesting bird amongst them. After much shuffling of scopes we found the flock of about 35 birds and immediately the bird in question was visible. Of course I was expecting a large yellow bill, which it had, but I could also see a white forehead and white base to the bill and I immediately said that's a Surf Scoter.

The flock was drifting further west so we walked several hundred metres to get a better view, which we did and reconfirmed that this was a drake Surf Scoter. Then around 9.45 the flock took off and continued East, with the bird then also showing the white nape patch.

What a great bird  and the first recorded on the  Selsey Peninsula, we debated whether this indeed was the bird which was seen passing Portland Bill, as from a timing point of view it was perfect but you can never rule out a 2 bird theory, and none of the previous or subsequent Scoter flocks held such a bird.

There were no more Skuas but we did add a very smart drake summer plumaged Long-tailed Duck and 2 Velvet Scoter. and several Swallows, House Martins a 5 Swift arrived off the sea. A good number of Bar-tailed Godwit passed through with only 5 Whimbrel and unusually 2 Common Sandpipers and nothing in the way of passerines.

I stopped at Pagham visitor centre and looked at the Ferry Pool and Long Pool. 2 Little Ringed Plover, a Knot and 5 Dunlin were mingling with the 75 Black-tailed Godwits and 16 Whimbrel flew up the channel. The bushes and reeds were full of Reed Warbler, Sedge Warbler, Whitethroat and at least 1 Lesser Whitethroat.

Looks like the Poms might have to wait for another year unless there is an unlikely flurry at the end of May !.


The pictures below are horrible as it was too distant really to get any sort of photo.

It's the second bird from the left

Still the second bird - unfortunately looks like a Coot in this picture !!

Lower-middle bird.

2 Velvet Scoter

Long-tailed Duck