New Sights: New Ponds and a Gadwall

Our walk this afternoon led us to explore a part of the local Rising Sun Country Park which I've very rarely been to and which my Editor had only visited once with a friend. There's a number of new(ish) small ponds which were created over the last several years to receive drainage from the land on which some new housing estates have been built. The newest ponds aren't yet very well colonised by wildfowl but on the oldest of them, which I guess may have been there for about 20 years, we saw Canada Geese, Coots, Moorhens (I missed a chance to capture a male chasing a female) and Mallards - along with several examples of this species which we didn't recognise. They seemed to be associating with the Mallards and we wondered if they were juveniles. However on looking them up back home we found that they're Gadwalls and I think this is a male (the RSPB website shows the female as being rather browner). If any blippers are more knowledgeable than me then please feel free to correct me! Seemingly they're an "amber" species as regards conservation. They're much commoner in the UK in winter (about 25,000 of them) as they migrate from harsher weather in parts of continental Europe: in summer there's only about 1200 breeding pairs.

So we explored new(ish) territory and saw a species of duck which was new to us - a profitable afternoon!

PS Don't forget that tomorrow is the monthly Silly Saturday challenge in memory of Admirer. This month it's kindly hosted by Pipersmom and the tags are SilSApril2021 and/or SilS235.