Monday 7th October was one of those wet days we seem to have had a lot of recently where it's raining when you open the curtains first thing in the morning and it's still raining when the light fades in the evening. Fortunately I had no plans so was happy to stay indoors. Early afternoon I got a call from Simon Roddis to say he had a small skua on the water at Carsington and was I interested to come and have a look at it?
I was, and set off almost immediately marvelling at the dedication of Simon and other Carsington regulars who brave all weather in search of interesting birds, their efforts had been well rewarded recently with a brief Grey Phalarope and a longer staying Slavonian Grebe.
I arrived at the Sheepwash Car Park and set off for Brown Ale Bay the last reported location of the skua. I bumped in to Roy Frost on the way who was just leaving, unaware of the skua sighting but who was more than happy to tag along on the skua quest.
The skua was just drifting out of view when we arrived and joined Simon and Roger Carrington my first thought was to try and get some record photos in case it disappeared altogether. I took a few photos in the poor light using the 500mm lens with a 2x converter, not ideal but the bird was some distance away. It then took off and landed another 100m away so I was glad I did.
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| Long-tailed Skua juvenile |
A couple of photos were put on Twitter which resulted in several people questioning why it wasn't a Long-tailed Skua.
In the end the birds identity as a juvenile Long-tailed was clinched on the following points;
- Evenly spaced broad buff barring on the under tail,
- Lack of pale tips to the primaries,
- On the upper wing only two white primary shafts, Arctic usually shows more,
- Dark tip to bill covering about half of its length. In Arctic the dark tip is not so clearly demarcated. I had thought that the bill was rather long and thin but this appeared to be in the range for Long-tailed.
We quickly conceded that it was indeed a juvenile Long-tailed Skua and a first record for Carsington Water and only the 7th for Derbyshire.
Unfortunately it wasn't present the following day.
It certainly proved a valuable lesson in assessing all of a birds features when making an identification and the value of obtaining photos of any unusual bird.
