Changeover day

This morning at Lucy's Mill, while photographing Migrant Hawkers, I was moaning at some innocent civilians about the lack of tufted ducks in Stratford, and blaming the unseasonably warm weather for causing them to delay their southward migration. Then I walked into town and immediately spotted two of them, just off the Bancroft Gardens quay. That's my career as a climatologist up in flames.

So anyway, here we have an adult male, now almost fully through his second moult from eclipse into breeding plumage. He's rather nice, I think, and was unusually cooperative about having his photo taken. The extra photo shows his companion, who was more nervous and stayed further out in the river. Its amber (as opposed to yellow) eye denotes a first winter bird, all of which look quite a lot like adult females, and given the distance at which I was having to work the sex wasn't immediately clear to me, but after cropping and examining my photos I'm pretty sure that it's a juvenile female.

I don't expect that this pair will stay in Stratford, unless some others arrive very soon to form a flock and increase their sense of security, but it's always nice when the first overwinterers turn up, even if they are just passing through, and I'm pleased that I was in Stratford today to see them.