Wednesday 15th November - Out for a Duck

Probably a phrase spoken often in relation to the England Cricket team, especially in recent weeks. I hadn't caught up with Gary Howard for a while and we agreed to fit in a day out before upcoming trips.

Apart from a few more northerly Waxwings there was little of a tempting nature with the exception of a drake Canvasback which had been seen since the weekend at Abberton Reservoir in Essex.

I duly picked Gary up and we drove the relatively short distance after the Dartford Crossing. a surprising amount of water was on some of the side roads, but we arrived at the Layer-de-la-Hay causeway shortly after 8am.

It was sunny but with a fairly strong and at times biting wind. It took no time at all to find the flock of Common Pochard that the duck in question had been seen with. There were 300+ at an estimate and they were constantly feeding. It was actually quite a spectacle as they were a tightly packed flock and fed in unison making the water look as if it was boiling. This made locating the Canvasback trickier than we thought as at any point in time at least half the flock were under water.

We had seen a few Goldeneye, and decent numbers of Wigeon, Teal and Tufted Duck before finally picking out the drake Canvasback with it's larger head profile and all dark and strong bill. Once it had been seen it then seemed easier to track.

There is always some debate about the wild credentials of North American duck species that end up on these shores when private wildfowl collections also hold these species, particularly when reports of the same duck species have been recently released in a neighbouring county. All we know about this individual is that it was cohorting with 300+ distinctly wild Common Pochard, flying freely and not looking like it would be coming to bread offerings in a hurry.

We briefly went to the Layer Breton causeway although not much in additional species were added other than Shoveler and a Grey Heron.

We worked our way around some road closures to the church viewpoint at the Northern end of the reservoir seeing Great Egret, a very large Coot flock of maybe 500+ birds, Peregrine, Red Kite, and several Goosander. Our plan was to go to Mersea island for high tide and view the saltmarsh and estuary but we were thwarted by a particularly high, high tide which had washed over the link road so instead we returned to the Abberton visitor centre and walked out to the hides. A large gull roost had formed, but only consisting off common species but we did see 2 Great Northern Divers and a Stonechat in front of the hide . We had no further view of the Canvasback and decided to head home as the light was quickly fading but a successful outing. 

Abberton from the main causeway... there is actually a flock of Pochard towards the buildings on the left.

Bright and sunny, but the wind was strong and biting.

It is a vast reservoir