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."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article