Colour-ringed Tufted Duck!

Yesterday I went for a walk along Llanelli beach and up to Sandy Water Park. A Chiffchaff landed in a bush breifly, called once, and then flew high to the east. On the lake were a single Pochard, c.16 Shoveler and c.10 Tufted Duck. Some of the Tufted Duck were taking advantage of the almost constant feeding by members of the public that takes place in the south east corner. While scanning over them, I noticed that one had a pale yellow ring on its right leg, and when it turned I could see that it had an orange ring on the left. The colours were quite hard to judge through the water and the bird soon went behind cover. I came back today to have another look, and thankfully it was showing much better. On the left leg there was a metal ring under the orange which I hadn't noticed yesterday.

This bird was ringed at Radipole Lake in Dorset in 2007 in a study with the WWT. Twelve males were ringed that year, but even though I can make out the first five characters of the metal ring, it still isn't enough to narrow it down to an individual.

Most birds from this study seem to migrate to and from their breeding grounds in Siberia through the lower counties of England, so this bird is a little unusual in that respect. Perhaps it over shot its wintering grounds?

On Monday I saw a Bittern again as I was locking up the hides, and on Wednesday I picked up a Merlin perched up over the saltmarsh, the first I've seen here. There were good numbers of waders roosting on the Saline Lagoon with 890 Dunlin, 640 Knot, 222 Curlew, 474 Black-tailed Godwit, 17 Greenshank and three Spotted Redshank. Four Water Rail were also showing nicely from the hide.

On Thursday, we helped out catching some of the collection birds to update the records. We caught all the Red-crested Pochards and Philippine Ducks bar one which wouldn't come out of cover. In the previous week we caught all but one of the Buffleheads, despite spending an hour with five people in the pond armed with nets after just the one bird! It kept diving through the line we formed from one side to the other, and never seemed to tire.