hkinni

15/06/2008
米埔 Mai Po

handrew

Could this be a hybrid? Looking at Madge & Burn pl 35 and text 241 et seq the white on the flanks doesn't seem to be extensive enough for a pure RCP and the white on the wings is not typical as far as I can see. The primaries and secondaries should be white but not the tertials. The feathers also look very worn in the photo - abraded quite badly. Possible escape too? The Handbook of Bird Identification also gives similar descriptions but of course Steve madge co-authored that with Mark Beaman so not unexpected. Just my 3 pennyworth.

Andrew

hkinni

the cutted wings show that it's a escaped bird

ajohn

I don't think there's much evidence of hybridisatioin - the white on the right flank is perhaps not quite as extensive as usual but it's hard to see what other species would cause this. The white in the wings looks fairly normal (ie extensive white on the primaries and secondaries).

Given the state of the plumage, especially the apparently clipped left wing, I think it's very unlikely that this is a wild bird

But at least we can be sure it's not a scoter ;)