More from Vermont on the Pochard on Lake Champlain at the Champlain Bridge (between NYS and VT).
Rich Guthrie New Baltimore The Greene County [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: Vermont Birds [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Allan Strong Sent: Tuesday, January 01, 2013 8:55 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [VTBIRD] Common Pochard update I made it down to the bridge around 4:10 PM with Ted Murin and met Brendan Collins, Tyler Pockette, Justin LeClaire, and Larry Haugh. The Pochard had been relocated and soon we all had looks at the bird, although the light was fading fast. The last we saw of the Pochard, it was flying north up the Lake, but at that time, the entire scaup/goldeneye flock was getting antsy and moving around. Although it did not obviously return to the main flock, the light was sufficiently poor that it could have ended up just a little out of scope range. We saw the bird from underneath the Vermont side of the Crown Point bridge. Most of the birds were foraging within about 300 m of shore. The Pochard was primarily in the company of scaup. Although I didn't see the Tufted Duck, Tyler and Brendan had seen it a few minutes earlier (although not the Harlequin). It would be great to get a few more pictures of the bird. There doesn't appear to be any doubt that it is a Common Pochard, but additional photo documentation would be wonderful. We did not see the potential female so further information on that bird would also be helpful. While we observed the Pochard, it was not in the company of another bird and for a while it was slightly isolated from the rest of the flock. Because the flock is so large, picking the bird out of the crowd is the most difficult task but the light back color is probably the easiest field mark as scanning for "red heads" ends up with a lot of stalls on female mergansers and goldeneyes. I got a follow-up email from Jeremiah Trimble (eBird editor for MA and Curatorial Associate at the Museum of Comparative Zoology) who writes: "As you may know there is a record for Quebec of Common Pochard from Spring of 2008. Other than that there is not much (nothing?) from eastern North America! There was also a flock of 4 (I believe it was 4) in Barbados in 2011. The question of origin is of course a worry but given the company (Tufted Duck) and the presence of other European birds in the East (Little Egret, Northern Lapwings) I personally wouldn't go down the escapee route...tough though. " So, as you can see, this is a very special bird. Good luck in relocating it. Allan -- ******************************************************************* Allan M. Strong University of Vermont The Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources 220L Aiken Center 81 Carrigan Drive Burlington, VT 05405 802-656-2910 ******************************************************************* -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
