I went to Whitford on Sunday with the Gower birding group. The saltmarsh area had large numbers of
Wigeon,
Teal and
Pintail, as well a
Great White Egret, and a
Merlin hunting overhead. An interesting looking grebe was found out on the estuary fishing up one of the channels. It was always distant, and with poor light it was hard to pick out much detail. It had a dusky head with undefined markings making it look good for Red-necked Grebe. It also at times seemed very long necked and long bodied. However, the beak always looked short through the scope and I couldn't detect any yellow at the base. Size was hard to judge, but when a Great Crested Grebe was briefly in the same view it looked a little on the small side for Red-necked to me. The other possibility is that it's a Slavonian Grebe moulting into summer plumage making the head markings less defined. I think the only way to know for sure is if better views are obtained, so hopefully it'll be re-found. I'm completely torn either way, but perhaps slightly more on the Slav side because of the shortness of the beak.
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| Grebe sp. |
Offshore there were two
Great Northern Divers, a
Slavonian Grebe and c.40
Eider.
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| Eider |
Laurie, I'd say Slavonian, but these can be very troublesome when they're not typically clean looking
ReplyDeleteMark Hipkin has done some beak analysis. In RNG the beak should make up >40% of the head length, and <30% in Slav. In some photos it looks like it is around 40-45% so he is thinking it's a RNG, but this is hard to judge in distant pixelated images. I'd still prefer closer views before committing one way or the other, but perhaps leaning more towards RNG now.
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