Month: June 2017

Turning up and performing well in front of the hide at the southern end of Daventry Country Park yesterday, ‘Buffy’ was finally stripped of her celebrity status as she revealed more of that tell-tale ring detail.

Thanks to some excellent images from Bob Bullock, it became apparent that our Bufflehead’s ring format does not conform to any which is used in either Canada or the USA – either now or in recent history. Digits around the centre of the ring include random numbers 38, 58, 60 (or 09) and there is no alphanumeric contact detail in smaller text above or below these numbers.

I am grateful to Chris Wood of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York who, upon receiving copies of the above images, kindly commented as follows: “Honestly, I can’t imagine this ever being used by a researcher here. Bands have been standardized for a long time now and this just doesn’t look like anything we would use.”

Danny Bystrak, Wildlife Biologist at the Bird Banding Lab, Patuxent Wildlife Research Centre near Washington, USA, also commented: “The band looks narrow and over-sized is not something I have ever heard of anyone using in the US or Canada.” [via Chris Wood]

So, there we are. Our Bufflehead has indeed gone west … along with any chance of it being a new bird for the county.

Postscript: it is reportedly back at Clifford Hill GP today.

The lady shows her ring …

… but the detail is indiscernible. I spent some more time with the Bufflehead this afternoon, hoping to see some ring detail – any ring detail – which might help shed some light on its origin. At one point, it came out of the water and stood on the bank but its visit to land was all too brief and, before I could get the scope focussed for a digiscoped shot, it was off again and back into the water. It’s also difficult to capture any decent images or video as, most of the time, it seems to be very active, constantly diving and spending 80%-90% of its time below the surface.

However, I did manage some more video, from which I took a series of grabs showing the ring, which appear below. Image A would suggest there is some inscription in the middle section of the ring, but this is far from certain. Blow-ups don’t help, either.

For comparison, here are two videograbs of the 2015 Bedfordshire bird, which was also ringed on the right leg. The proportions of the rings look similar but may not be.

They also appear to be similarly proportioned to Canadian duck rings, also illustrated below. None of this actually means, or proves, anything, of course, but it would be nice to get to the bottom of where this bird actually originated.

Persistence is required, waiting for the next time it sits out on the bank … Interestingly more Buffleheads have been seen in June than in any other month and in central England than any other area in the UK. Thanks to Andrew Cook and Mark Hill for pointing this out (source: Rare Bird Alert).

With some potentially serious negatives against it, what is ostensibly the first Bufflehead for Northants is likely to be an escape … or is it?

Late this morning, Terry O’dell discovered what later proved to be an adult female Bufflehead on the south side of the main barrage lake at Clifford Hill Gravel Pits. It was still present this afternoon, during which I managed to obtain some rather poor quality, wind-shaken, digiscoped video.

There have been two individuals deemed escapes reported recently: a yellow-ringed bird in Norfolk in April and a (presumed) metal-ringed bird in West Yorkshire last month. The Clifford Hill bird is metal-ringed on its right leg and, along with its having appeared in June, the odds are rightly stacked against it being a wild individual. Or are they?

Bedfordshire, 29th October 2015

Here are a few facts resulting from my research into the escape likelihood of the one in Bedfordshire in October 2015. I’d spent some considerable time looking at the Bedfordshire Bufflehead ring and doing some research.

I have a contact who produces a lot of video material for the BBC and I sent him some footage to see if he could freeze the ring on my video of that bird better than I could. He tried but couldn’t. The characters on the ring appeared to occupy a good 50% of the depth of the ring and appear just as a dark area. Any smaller characters above or below, if they exist, are invisible. The format could match one or two of the smaller rings in the image attached, lifted from http://www.duckbands.com/ an American site.

I also spoke to James Lees at length about it. His view from a ringing perspective was that it was more likely to have been ringed in the wild than in captivity because most collections use plastic rings, not metal, and he believes that Slimbridge is the only collection (he knows of) which uses metal rings (same format as BTO rings) for individual ID because their collection is extensive and because they move birds around to other collections to breed and keep the gene pool healthy. He also pointed out that American-ringed ducks have been seen in the UK before and that they once had a ringed Ring-necked Duck visit from the states and it ultimately found its way back across the Atlantic, and was seen again in Newfoundland after leaving Slimbridge. All this I guess we know …

So, what we have for the pro-wild camp is:

• Metal ring, indicating higher likelihood of wild than captive origin
• Ring format could match that of Nearctic-ringed bird
• 22.5 thousand Buffleheads ringed in Nearctic between 1951 & 2011
• Buffleheads can live for 18 years (OK if it’s an adult drake coming out of eclipse)
• October is the peak migration month for Bufflehead in the USA
• The bird stayed for one day only and, so far, has not been reported anywhere else
• No birds missing from local collections (but doesn’t rule out an escape from further afield)

And for the pro-escape camp:

• It had a ring of any type

That’s my analysis concluded. Read into it what you will but unless it’s seen to haul itself out on to the bank or an island, where the ring can be properly seen, we’ll never know for sure.