Sunday, 26 July 2015

Hooded Merganser

Just before lunchtime I was sitting down watching the rain falling heavily on my living room window. My phone rang and it was Colin Green and he sounded quite excited. He and Pete Asher had lost their senses and were out birding in the rain at Brascote Pits. They had spotted a small 'merganser' and thought it might be a Hooded Merganser. I looked at the rain on the window and then my wife and said 'hold the dinner I'm off to help Colin and Pete'.

 On arrival I could sense something was wrong. True to form it had flown from its original location and they had lost it. 

 Luckily Colin re-found it on one of the other pools. It was distant and appeared wary - good sign. It then completely let itself down by swimming directly towards us and came as close as it could. With better views we confirmed the identification.

 Lovely duck, but sadly not the 200th genuinely wild bird for SW Leicestershire I'm afraid. 

Female Hooded Merganser

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3 comments:

  1. colin26 July 2015 at 19:43

    Nice Image Carl considering the conditions, shame it made a bee line for us all the same a nice duck and thanks for coming over.

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  2. davidearlgray27 July 2015 at 17:51

    It's probably an escape, but when I saw Hooded Mergansers in Central Park in New York you could almost feed them by hand!!

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  3. Carl Baggott27 July 2015 at 19:28

    I'd like to think it is a re-orientating bird that came from the US, but Brascote Pits, July and tame don't stack up well :-)

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