The big stories
Olly Frampton was conducting a monthly WeBS count when he stumbled across a mega duck, which may prove to be a county first.
Hampshire was graced by a Baikal Teal in what could prove to be a county first, a stunning Eyebrowed Thrush wintered in Kent and a showy American Herring Gull touched down in Cornwall.
Baikal Teal: Ripley, Hampshire, 14-16 March 2021
AFTER a quiet WeBS count at a gravel pit in the New Forest, I wasn’t feeling optimistic when I drove a few minutes down the road to do the count at Ripley Farm Reservoir. Keith Young was on site and we chatted about how Ripley could turn up a good bird sometime. We didn’t realise it was under our noses at this point …
Unfortunately, Keith was long gone by the time I’d started counting through the 400-strong flock of Eurasian Wigeon. I’d scanned about halfway along the flock on the far bank of the pit when I noticed a grey-sided duck with its head tucked between its wings, roosting near the water’s edge.
A distinctive vertical white stripe between the breast and the flanks was the first thing I picked out. Visions of a drake Greenwinged Teal popped into my head; this was the obvious candidate, with a long-staying drake not that far away at Longham Lakes in Dorset earlier in the year.
Something wasn’t quite right, though. Just visible on the head was a thin horizontal white stripe above the eye, with two large areas of green and yellow on the face separated by a black stripe which also encircled the eye.
My heart rate definitely rocketed at this point. Even though I’d never seen a Baikal Teal before, I’d seen them in field guides and enough photos of the 2019 drake that toured several UK counties to know that without a doubt I was looking at a prime example of one in my scope.
Typically, I’d left my phonescope adapter at home but knew the first thing to do was get some phone-scoped record shots should the bird decide to fly off, leaving me struggling to convince anyone of what I’d seen! With a few soft and overexposed photos now safely on my phone, I forwarded one to a handful of local birders but asked to keep the news to themselves for the time being.
When the first few locals arrived there were discussions about the bird’s origins and whether or not it was ringed.
With the Baikal stood on the bank, its straw-coloured legs were seen well and we could confirm it was definitely unringed and when it made a brief flight onto the reservoir, it appeared to show no signs of wing damage. The bird spent virtually all its time roosting on the bank with the Eurasian Wigeon which it almost certainly arrived with that morning, as a roost count at first light produced 30 fewer wigeon than were present when I found the Baikal a few hours later.
Even with the UK still under the government’s lockdown guidance, we knew that if news went national, the mostly narrow roads around Ripley with few suitable parking areas could be inundated with birders’ cars. I phoned
Keith Betton, the Hampshire county recorder, for some advice, and between the few who now knew about the bird, the overall consensus was that it would be best to keep it to ourselves.
There was no sign of the bird on 15th. Fortunately, it made a reappearance on 16th and showed well throughout the day, only to disappear by 17th. It generated a steady stream of local admirers who were all considerate with regards to social distancing and parking. Local county listers will no doubt have been enthused by this bird’s presence as the identification of Hampshire’s only previous record, a drake shot near Winchester in 1915, was unproven. ■