250 but for how long?

The drake Baikal Teal that was found at East Chevington yesterday after it's brief trip up to Scotland from Hornsea Mere (where it's been for a while) made a much shorter trip overnight to the Budge fields at Druridge.

That was the news that greeted me when I woke this morning. No breakfast and a creased shirt for work meant I could be there pretty smartly to find the hide already full of birders and the teal swimming about and feeding on the flooded fields.

It spent spent most of its time with it's head in the water, feeding. That and the distance made it tricky to get a decent photo of it, but it showed really well and I was pleased that made it the short hop down to Druridge to be the 250th species on my patch list. 

Heavily cropped drake Baikal Teal on the Budge fields

With rare wildfowl there is always the question - is it a fence-hopper? Will this bird stay on my list for long or will the BOURC consider it a an escapee and boot it off my list?

Well - it's there for now and if it is considered pukka - what a bird to bring up the 250!

It was also nice to see that the shoveler family still have five of their seven ducklings. Druridge Pools is the last reliable breeding site in the county for this species.

Shoveler with five shovelettes

Thanks to Ian fisher for the calls this morning to let me know.