A last huzzah

First-Winter drake scaup, Elton Reservoir

I decided to bob over to Elton Reservoir for my last pre-lockdown jaunt. The bar-tailed godwit is still reported to be there but I decided that was the least priority for a walk on a very nice afternoon.

Elton Reservoir looking picturesque

I started along the path on the Northern side of the reservoir, which was very wet underfoot so I only walked as far as the creek then turned back to the car park and walked the Southern margin. If the usually firm bits were that wet I didn't fancy trying my luck in the quagmires. 

Lesser black-back
Possibly a fourth-Winter going by the limited amount of yellow on the bill.

There were a couple of hundred black-headed gulls on the reservoir, accompanied by a dozen lesser black-backs and singles of herring and common gull. One of the lesser black-backs was a puzzler: it was significantly paler on the mantle than usual, almost common gull grey. This, and the limited white on the primaries made me wonder about yellow-legged gull but structurally it wasn't right for one: the wings seemed short even for a lesser black-back and the head and bill were relatively small. The dumpy jizz was all wrong for a Caspian gull and any other options were both extremely unlikely and well beyond my competence to identify so I had to conclude that it was an odd lesser black-back. It was all so much easier back in the days when if it wasn't a lesser black-back or an Iceland gull it could only be a herring gull.

Probably a lesser black-back

Probably a lesser black-back

Another head-scratcher was one of the birds in the raft of tufted ducks at the Western end of the reservoir. In most ways it looked like a tufted duck but the head was more rounded, like a scaup, the black nail at the end of its bill was huge and its eyes were black. I think it was mostly a tufted duck with a pochard somewhere back in the gene pool.

Mostly a tufted duck, I think

There was a definite first-Winter drake scaup at the end of the reservoir closest to Capsticks. A lot of new adult feathers, finely vermiculated grey and white, were showing on its back and wing coverts, giving it a burst mattress look as it bobbed on the surface. I tried to work out what it was eating: at least once it brought up a freshwater mussel.

Diving scaup

I could hear the bar-tailed godwit calling from within the reeds on Capsticks but I was damned if I could see it. Technically it's fourth time lucky but it was very frustrating,

I took the path that goes stratight to Bury Road, for a change and because more buses run that way. I was rewarded with very muddy boots, a couple of goldcrests with a flock of redwings in the hawthorn boundary hedge and all the buses running half an hour late. At least there'll be one thing I won't miss on lockdown!