Mark (P) collected me from my home at 7am in the fast fading darkness of a cold but thankfully almost windless Monday morning. Two other early risers were already up and about, with a Robin singing and a Blackbird scuttling across the road in the village.
Mark is comparativly late to birding and much is new to him, so he is determined to build up his list of birds seen. A Baikal Teal and three Penduline Tits in Somerset would both be welcome additions to his lifelist. I was hardly complaining as a Baikal Teal is a very rare bird in Britain and I had already dipped the tits twice and consequently had vowed never to go again, but maybe it would be third time lucky.
We drove into what promised to be a pleasant cold morning of sunshine, crossing the Cotswolds and dropping down onto the M5 Motorway to head west. Checking RBA (Rare Bird Alert) there was no news about the Baikal Teal. A little worrying as it had not been reported yesterday either. After forty five minutes Mark turned off the motorway and onto narrower roads that wound through the flat green fields of the Somerset Levels until we came upon the RSPB's isolated and atmospheric Greylake Reserve, near Bridgewater and where, hopefully we would see the Baikal Teal.
As with all rare ducks no one really has a clue as to its origin but for now it is accepted as a genuine vagrant and there is, after all, another one further north in Yorkshire, so the presence of these two very rare ducks (only seven previous records for Britain) was good enough for us.The bird itself certainly appears wary and shows no sign of previous captivity, and is associating with a huge number of Eurasian Teal and Wigeon that have made the flooded grassland and shallow water of the reserve their winter home.
The Baikal Teal, which is a male, was first discovered from a photo taken in late December 2021 and officially confirmed on January 2nd when it was still in its mainly brown, undistinguished eclipse plumage but has subsequently morphed into the spectacularly plumaged bird that is a male Baikal Teal, its head now a segmented pattern of emerald and cream, outlined in black and white, its breast purple pink divided from grey flanks by a vertical dash of white and with elongated cream and brown striped scapulars splaying across a grey brown upperbody. Normally found in the Far East, breeding in Russia and wintering in southern China, it is very far from its normal home but as many vagrants do, has found companionship with the next best thing to its own kind in our similar sized Eurasian Teal, that abound on the reserve.
We parked in a small inconsequential car park, not dissimilar to a more familiar one at Otmoor, my local RSPB reserve. At this early hour it was occupied by just a few scattered cars and a very friendly Robin, perching within feet of us and cocking a bright eye in our direction as it stood expectantly waiting and hoping but we had nothing for it.
Greylake was unfamiliar to both of us so we followed an obvious trail, a corridor winding through tall reedbeds withered to stiff, straw brown stems by winter and eventually we came upon two small wooden hides, more like screens than hides, with no door or back wall, looking out onto a large area of flooded grassland and reeds dotted with the rotund forms of many ducks, most of which were asleep.
The tiny hides were already near full to capacity when we got there and we were the last to be able to get a clear view out onto the marsh.
Mark went first with the obvious and vital question.
Is it showing?
No need to elaborate.
Everyone was here for the same thing.
The Baikal Teal.
To our immense relief and I confess pleasant surprise, the answer from our fellow birders was in the affirmative and a kind person allowed us to look at it through his scope already trained on it, as amongst the hordes of duck it would take quite some time to locate on our own, if at all!
The next task was to locate it ourselves within the vast assembly of sleeping ducks and get our scopes on it.
Through the birder's scope the duck had been obvious but looking through our scopes it was not so easy to pin it down.
Our friend issued some welcome guidance
See the two sleeping wigeon in front of us?
Go beyond them and there is a female wigeon on her own in the water, then beyond on the grass bank a male teal and the Baikal Teal is behind the teal, with its back to us.
It's closer than it appears in the scope. he added
Even so it took some minutes until we could locate it ourselves as it was tucked well into the grass and far from obvious, surrounded as it was by teal and wigeon.What gave it away for me were the emerald green patches on each side of its head, currently tucked into its back feathers.
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| The Baikal Teal asleep behind the male Teal |
And this is how it remained, fast asleep.
However the main objective had been accomplished.We had seen it which was by no means a certainty. I know of more than one birder who has travelled to see it and failed, for unless the flocks of duck are in front of the hide there are plenty of areas on the reserve where it can remain invisible, That's birding for you.Luck is always involved to a greater or lesser extent.
Having got it in my scope I now tried to locate it via my bins.Again it was initially difficult but eventually by using surrounding ducks as pointers I got it fair and square.Now it was just a question of keeping an eye on it and waiting for it to move, put its head up or frankly, do anything other than sleep.
In the meantime there was plenty to look at with the multitude of ducks in front of us.Some teal were awake and the drakes, as ever, fussed around amongst themselves, portly and compact busybodies, swimming around with a self important air. The larger wigeon either slept or wandered through the wet grass, pushing teal out of the way as they plucked at the grass. A shoveler drake looked around with bright golden eyes, startling in his bottle green head, his harlequin plumage eye catching in the morning sun. In the distance a Great White Egret strolled through yet more congregations of ducks on another flooded meadow as the dark brown form of a Marsh Harrier cruised beyond and a male Sparrowhawk sat for an age on the top of a reed. The still cold air was regularly punctuated by the whistles of wigeon and the cricket like calls of the teal.
The sun slowly disappeared as an indefinite greyness rose from the marsh and the air became colder and damp.
We continued to wait for the Baikal Teal to do something but it never moved, nor did the majority of the teal, also fast asleep.Some wigeon blundered around on the grass, idly plucking grass but their heart was not really in it and they too would settle to sleep and for half an hour at least there we all were.
Waiting.
I was rather taken by surprise when suddenly all the ducks heads shot up in alarm to be followed almost instantaneously by a roar of wings as hundreds of ducks took to the air, including the Baikal Teal. There was no time to think and I just pointed the camera at where I thought the Baikal was and fired away in its direction, hoping that by some faint miracle my lens would connect with the fleeing bird.
The panicked ducks flew a low, tight circle in front of us, everyone offering a silent prayer that they would not fly off to a distant part of the reserve and to much relief they landed on more open water nearby and to even greater pleasure, there was the Baikal Teal, now much more obvious and with its head finally out of its feathers. It preened for a little while and then went back to sleep.
Then yet another panic seized the horde and up into the air they went, again not very high, circling around as before but landing more distantly, and crucially the Baikal Teal was now all but out of our sight.
Up to now, despite the cramped conditions, our fellow occupants of the hide had been quiet and sensible but we had become aware of more and more people arriving and the noise levels and disturbance rose alarmingly as one particular very irritating lady demonstrated her ignorance of hide etiquette, demanding on her arrival, in a loud voice, that someone move their unattended scope. She could not keep quiet and continued with a high volume verbal commentary on everything and anything. I felt sorry for her husband who looked acutely embarrassed.
Mark whispered, 'Time to go?'
I had to agree.It was getting unbearable in the hide and the whole atmosphere had changed for the worse.
We thanked our good fortune that we had seen the Baikal Teal so well and could get away from all the noise as the remaining occupants tried, with varying success, to locate a nigh on invisible and distant sleeping duck, hidden in the long grass away to our left.
Good luck with that!
Terrific! 😁
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