A late afternoon visit to Dorchester-on-Thames gave me a chance to see my first year sighting of Long-tailed Duck,
The pit contained good numbers of Wildfowl which included Great Crested Grebe, Cormorant, Grey Heron, Pochard, Wigeon, Shoveler, Common Teal, Gadwall, Mallard and Tufted Duck. A large gathering of 150+ Black-headed Gulls were also present.
After viewing the Drayton road pit for sometime I still hadn't located the Long-tailed Duck, I was beginning to think that it had left and decided to take one more view of the pit from another viewpoint. I found a suitable gap and again scanned from one end of the pit to the other without any success, suddenly I was alerted to a few Black-headed Gulls squabbling amongst themselves and closer inspection showed that they were actually hassling the juvenile Long-tailed Duck. It was continually diving for fairly long periods and being hassled by the Gulls each time it returned to the waters surface, this continued for over 10 minutes with the Long-tailed Duck doing it's best to avoid detection by surfacing further away from where it dived.
Added To My Year List.
221. Long-tailed Duck
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