Zach Pannifer Birding: The Confusion Continues!

For the last weekend in January, I went to Beddington Farmlands on both the Saturday and Sunday as I felt I had not done as much birding yet this year as I would have liked. The Saturday morning got off to a good start: a Red Kite was circling over the South Lake first thing (my 2nd of the year), followed two minutes later by a Little Egret flying south, which had presumably just left the roost at Watermeads and was heading out to feed for the day. A Reed Bunting was also heard calling. After standing at the South Lake hide for about 40 minutes, I heard two wheezy calls of a Brambling before picking it out flying around the lake with 4 Goldfinches. The views were brief as I saw its white rump disappear over the Farmlands border and into Beddington Park. This was the first Brambling of the year for Beddington. All was going well. Now that it was light enough, I decided to do a full scan of the South Lake and get some counts in. My attention was drawn to a particular Tufted Duck that seemed different to usual. The bill instantly reminded me of a Ring-necked Duck (despite never seeing one myself before) and the overall colouration of the bird seemed odd. What was going on?

The intriguing Tufted Duck:

A quick check in the afternoon with some fellow birders suggested that I was right to think that Ring-necked Duck influence was possible, but that Pochard influence are just Tufted Duck variation could not be ruled out, especially with these poor views. See further on in post for pics and discussion from Sunday.

Moving on from the South Lake hide, I headed off to the North Lake to finish my count of all the wildfowl before too much could move about. Satisfied that I had counted everything I wanted, I then went to investigate the Wet Grassland and see how many gulls there were to work with. By this point, Anand had joined me, and we were surprised to see that there were several hundreds of Black-headed Gulls but not many larger gulls. Nonetheless, we started to scan the flock in the hopes of a Mediterranean Gull mixed in - Anand has already found the only Farmlands record of the year so far. Unfortunately there was no joy but Anand managed to pick out the usual 2nd winter Caspian Gull. A few hours passed after that and nothing else interesting had been seen. We had already been up to 100 Acre to look over Jim's Bed and Anand managed to spot a small group of Common Snipe and there were also some Lapwing present, but unfortunately there were far fewer gulls than we were expecting. After one more quick scan, Anand headed off, only shortly to be replaced by Dave for the afternoon shift.

For the rest of the afternoon I scanned the gull flock over and over, determined to find at least one other interesting gull. But when I finally did spot an interesting gull, I was not quite sure what to make of it...

At rest, the bird vaguely reminded me of the biscuity colour that I associate with juvenile Iceland Gulls, and the pale primary tips interested me further. Could this be a dark Kumlien's reaching almost Thayer's?

However, a view of the spread wings gave me a better understanding as to how dark the outer primaries and tail band actually were. This along with the uppertail coverts not being very densely barred means that it is most likely a northern Herring Gull from a high latitude region (thanks Peter - see more here)

A very interesting bird though and one that I wish had shown a bit closer to allow for better study

Some more pics from Saturday's session:

This Red Fox ran past the Wet Grassland hide

Song Thrush on Mile Road singing loudly

Female Pochard

Adult Common Gull - interesting to see how the eye looks pale with the light shining on it

Adult Common Gull

Sadly this 2nd winter LBBG could not be morphed into a Slaty-backed😂

So after Saturday went well, my main aim for the Sunday was to try and relocate the interesting duck and get better pics of it. Surprisingly I actually managed to as it swam closer to the South Lake hide than it had the previous day. Better pics here:

From closer views, the bill still reminded me of Ring-necked Duck. When slightly on its side, the flanks also appeared dirty with some white coming through. However, after much discussion with far better birders (thanks Arjun, Cian, Ed, Matt, and Peter, plus @BirdHybrids on Twitter), I am now content with it being a pure Tufted Duck - the bill is still within variation and the rest of the bird also looks fine for a Tufty. However, I still find this individual very interesting and I would like to see more of the bird and get pics of the open wing to fully document its plumage. Overall though it has been great to learn from.

The rest of Sunday's pics: