Ring-necked Pixels

Bob McMillan is the official bird recorder here on Skye. Yesterday he went and found a drake Ring-necked Duck amongst a flock of Tufties on Loch Mealt. Somewhat surprisingly, this is just the second Ring-necked Duck to be found on Skye, the first being a male back in May 2016. It was distant and he managed only record shots, though plenty good enough to see what it was. This morning I had business in Portree, which is about 15 miles south of Loch Mealt. Good enough, I decided to drop in and say hello to this potential Skye lifer for me. Twenty minutes later and I could see the raft of ducks way out across the loch. And when I say way out...

At full zoom (which equates to 25x magnification)

The flock were actively feeding upon my arrival, hence it took three increasingly edgy scans through my scope before the drake Ring-necked Duck suddenly bobbed up into my field of view. Sweet! I noted all salient features before locking onto a female Scaup which I'd also overlooked several times. A drake Goldeneye suddenly appeared amongst the flock, followed by a female. I gave up attempting to count the Tufties, somewhere in the mid-30s I estimated. This is the only loch on Skye that I know of where you can consistently see diving duck. I had a male Pochard here once, that's a damn good bird up here!

The birds eventually stopped diving and generally sat about preening on the surface. This was my cue to take some pics and so, after updating the local WhatsApp group of the bird's continuing presence, I grabbed the camera and pointed it at the flock. The birds were far too tiny in the viewfinder to be able to pick out the Ring-neck, so I just pointed and pressed the button a good few times. Fingers crossed!

It's the bird behind the female Goldeneye. Honest guv....

This is actually the 'best' image I managed! 

All I can say is that it looked a lot better in real life at 60x mag in my scope. A sudden burst of sideways rain saw the camera disappear back into its bag before I quit the site. I suspect it's been at least four or five years since I last saw a drake Ring-necked Duck, though I've seen a couple of close females in Cornwall more recently. I expect that if this loch received better coverage it would turn up a few more nice surprises. Lesser Scaup for starters. Maybe the odd Bufflehead or Hooded Merg if we wanted to get crazy ideas. Or even, were we to go completely bonkers, a Coot.

Back at the hotel, I fired up the light trap seeing as it's supposed to be dry tonight and the temperatures were reasonable. I checked after a couple of hours and was shocked to find three male Winter Moths sat on the wall next to the trap. I think that's a new high count here! A quick headtorch skirmish through the trees failed to reveal any males gathered to the flightless females. Plenty of slugs out and about though.

Very obliging of it to let me see the hindwing like that

 In other news, only ten more days to go and it's New Year and New List time!!!