Monday 11th of May 2020
When I left the house this evening, I saw a few woodpigeons and house sparrows but not really much. As I carried on down the road, a wagtail sat on the other side of the road. It was quite cold and a bit cloudy and grey but excitement waited at the ponds. Nothing at all as I walked through the field.
When I got to the ponds, I could clearly see 3 mallards but then a strange duck swam out from beneath the trees so I quickly took a picture with my Nikon d5100 and zoomed in on it. A white eye stripe and mostly brown. The criteria only matched one bird. It was a male garganey. At first I could not confirm the sighting but as I snuck around the ponds, closely following its every move, I was able to confirm that it was a garganey.
It swam around the ponds quite quickly and it was very tricky to follow. Finally, after about 15 minutes of a wild goose chase, the garganey flew to the other side of the ponds and swam out of sight. Sorry about the hard to see photo – he stayed in the middle of the pond and my camera lens wasn’t strong enough to zoom right in!
If you do not have much knowledge on birds, then I’ll tell you how rare it is. It is a very scarce breeding summer visitor and passage migrant and I imagine this was a passage individual. To see a garganey is quite rare but if you do, it is very striking. The white-eye stripe and the brown body really are beautiful in a way.
When I went looking the next day, he was gone.
The Bovey Birder 