Patch Tick!

The sea was quite flat this morning, so I was hoping to pick up some birds sat on top of it. There weren’t many, just a couple of Great Crested Grebes, a couple of Shelduck, and a smattering of Shags and Cormorants. Over the 45 minutes spent watching, three Common Scoter (2m 1f) flew south, and a Red-throated Diver flew north. The diver flew quite close and I could see it raising its head and calling (I didn’t hear it though).

The wind had picked up a bit in the afternoon. I stopped off for another 45 minutes on my return journey from Dawlish Warren. There was still nothing much on the sea. At 2:05pm, I picked up a group of 3 Scoters flying south. They were fairly distant, but I could clearly see that one of them had white wing bars! VELVET! The bird was with two male Common Scoters and I could clearly see that the Velvet was brown compared with the black of the Commons. The Velvet also had a pretty pale belly indicating that it was a 1st winter and probably a female. When the group got level with the pier, they made a U-turn. This was led by the Velvet as the two others followed closely behind. However the U-turn meant that on the return pass, they were quite a bit further out to sea. I don’t think there have been any Velvet Scoters reported in Devon this winter (I may be wrong), so it was a pretty lucky sighting and a great new tick for the patch!