From Gary and Sarah Manning: Just spent a good few days in Pembrokeshire, with a bit of birding thrown in. Highlights are as follows:
Saturday
25th November- Marloes Mere to deer Park. Nothing massively unusual. A
peregrine at sea from Deer Park. Various chough sightings including 4
at the deer park, but a flock of 15 in the field behind the new bank at
Marloes was good. 32 grey seal on the beaches at deer park included 2
late pups that were still pretty small.
Sunday 26th November
Broad Haven caravan park - a mixed flock included female blackcap, chiffchaff, several goldcrest and a firecrest.
Little
Haven 2 divers off the point just a bit distant to be certain on id,
but I'm erring towards black throated. A school of at least 8 and
possibly more dolphins ( probably bottlenose) put up a small raft of 8
common scoter- no wing bars noted. 6 or so gannets also present
Monday 27th November
Bosherston
lily ponds. Female blackcap, chiffchaff, 2 chough feeding on the
grass area where the old house was- not seen them there before.
Odd
duck. Seen returning to Bosherston car park on first arm -initial
impression was a possibly gc grebe- clearly long necked . A binoculars
view suggested a slim necked bird with some white around the base of the
bill, but not much. Head was rounded in profile- not obviously crested.
Possible light band around base of the neck with almost chestnut
colouration of the breast feathers. Back was darker brown with lighter
flanks. At no stage did it dive, flap its wings or interact with
anything else. It was not with the tufties. It was observed in decent
light through Swarovski 10x42 bins for 5-10 minutes
I've
spent a lot of time this week looking at tufted ducks trying to pick
out ring neck ducks at home here in Somerset and it just didn't quite
fit. I didn't have means to photograph it, but my gut feeling is it that
it isn't a tufted and may be a scaup species. Although I have seen both
greater and lesser Scaup in the UK I have not seen a Female / juvenile
in this plumage.
Apologies
if it turns put to be an odd tufty, but I should let you know and
hopefully someone else can connect with it, and do a better job of
identifying it than me.