A DIVING duck normally found no nearer to Britain than Iceland sparked a fresh invasion of twitchers to Aberdeenshire at the weekend.

The drake Barrow's goldeneye, seen on both Meikle Loch and the Ythan estuary, north of Aberdeen, is one of a series of feathered oddities from opposite sides of the world reported in and off north-east Scotland in recent days.

The others - a robin-like Siberian rubythroat from Asia and a dark-eyed junco, a type of North American sparrow - escaped mass attention as they landed on ships off the Aberdeenshire coast.

In contrast hundreds of telescope and binocular-festooned enthusiasts gathered to see the Barrow's goldeneye. It was a repeat of the excitement when a North American belted kingfisher appeared on the river Dee nearAberdeen last month.

Among the enthusiasts was Lee Evans, founder of the UK400 Club, who added it to his 2005 species tally, which already tops 500 after trips to North Africa, the Middle East and eastern Europe.

He said: "While most previous British sightings of this species have involved wildfowl collection escapees, the prospects of this one being accepted as a genuine wild vagrant are strong.

"It behaves very much like a wild bird and, of course, both it and the junco reported in the North Sea follow the massive arrival of a wide range of species from North America last autumn and winter due to severe Atlantic gales."

Mr Evans, of Little Chalfont, Buckinghamshire, suspects the Barrow's goldeneye is from the eastern Canada population.

"With the possibility of Atlantic storms increasing through climate change, we can expect many more American birds to reach us in future and, if last autumn and winter are anything to go by, Scotland will be a main arrival point.

"As so many birders want to see them, this is good news for the tourist industries of Scotland's western and northern islands. Already many birders are talking about booking autumn accommodation on the Outer Hebrides."