Yankee teal

There's been good numbers of teal at Druridge since I got back from Taiwan and I've been scanning through them for green-winged teal.

I was working at home on Tuesday when a message came through to say that Andy McLevy had found a green-winger on the Budge fields - A lunchtime twitch was in order and I saw the bird.

It was still there today, making it onto my WeBS list - but we only saw it briefly from the south facing hide and too far for photos and then it disappeared into the flock of 406 regular Eurasian teals.

As well as a good teal count there were over 260 wigeon, 130 curlew and 15 grey heron and a single black-tailed godwit. A pair of oystercatchers were new for the year.

Green-winged teal occur, on average evry three years or so at Druridge. Some of them stay for a long time whlist others are day-birds and they're off. At the minute, the American  green-winged teal Anas carolinensis is considered as seperate species to 'our' teal by the IOC but not by eBird who mainly follow Clements taxonomy. So it could easily get 'lumped' again...

In the meantime it's on my list

This will probably be the highest duck count of the year as numbers will start to decrease soon as birds begin to head north.