Ring-necked Duck and the wildfowl of 2025

 

My first Ring-necked Duck wasn't one.  There was a female long-stayer at Lunt Meadows in October 2022, and I drove the half hour or so across to see it.  Everyone I walked past from the carpark said it was showing well from the screen.  Can't miss it mate, it's so close in.  Of course when I got there the only duck in evidence was a hybrid Mallard farmyard duck.  Eventually I found a flock of Tufted Duck and there was one unusual looking bird amongst them.  A little far out for my binoculars and it was the days between scopes after breaking my old one.  I took a series of photos and then told all my birding friends that I'd seen the Ring-necked Duck.  Sometimes we see what we're hoping to see rather than what's there.

Looking through the photos a week later and with the benefit of removing that expectation of an easy to find bird I could see that I had a range of rubbish photos of a scruffy female Tufted Duck and it didn't look anything like a Ring-necked really.  I was embarrassed: I'd been so confident.  Happily the Ring-necked Duck had lingered at Lunt and I was able to go back and actually see the right bird this time.

Today I had my closest views of one, a male, close in at Martin Mere.  I'd spent the late morning slowly following a very skittish first winter male Smew around Southport Marine Lake as it flushed away from photographers and dog-walkers.  Then an hour at Marshside watching a distant and cautious Snow Goose amongst Pink-feet; very different to the bird that was associating with a Mute Swan only 10 feet from the hides there earlier in the year.   So to Martin Mere where I was assured by half a dozen people that the Ring-necked was close enough that I'd be able to see the eponymous reddish ring around the neck.  When I arrived at the Discovery Hide the sunlight on the water was so fierce that fully half the mere was occluded and there was no chance of finding the bird amongst the thousands of silhouettes.  

I sat and watched Pintail, Wigeon, Pochard and Whooper Swans, and scanned through every group of Tufted Duck until suddenly I caught a glimpse of grey flanks where there should have been white.  One of those weird moments in birding when you just know you've seen the bird before your conscious mind goes through the checklist of features to confirm it.  A poor, obscured view of the duck rear-on, but something in there had pinged in my mind and I knew I was on the right bird.  Remembering my first time seeing one I spent a longer-than-usual amount of time confirming that I had the right bird before helping others in the hide get onto it.  Happily the Ring-necked Duck swam closer and in good light allowing me to see the odd shape of the head and the beautiful pattern across the bill.  Best of all was the burgundy line around the neck of the bird as it stretched and preened and dodged aggressive Mallards.

This encounter got me thinking about my year in terms of wildfowl and water birds.  I've spent a lot of time watching dozens of species of ducks, geese and swans and grebes this year  - oh for a Red-breasted Goose, the best of them all, somewhere local!  Watching wildfowl and winter birding has always been my first love though the older I get the more I appreciate the warmth of late spring.  My time doing a Big Year list this last twelve months has had me looking at the structure of the year and I'm so glad I've kept photos and accounts of what I was seeing in January and February because it feels like so long ago, I'm sure I'd forget without the aide memoir of the blog and the photos.  

So from Smew, Red-necked Grebe, Slavonian Grebe, Bewick's Swan, Blue-winged Teal, American Wigeon and so on back in January and February, to Ruddy Duck, Lesser Scaup and Long-tailed Duck of the middle of the year, to the Ring-necked Duck, Smew and Snow Goose of today, I'd say it's been a very good year for watching wildfowl.  Though my early months of 2025 were a struggle, I'm glad I went birding.  No matter how cold it gets, there's always ducks.