Water Pipit at Boulmer Northumberland ... a rare treat ...

My experience of Water Pipits over the years has been one of brief or distant views of birds ... or birds in tricky terrain where it has been difficult to view the bird because of long vegetation ... not so yesterday at Seaton Point, Boulmer ...

One had been reported there on the 16th January and again on the 24th January ...

The area of beach just to the south of Seaton Point had significant accumulations of seaweed where the top of the beach rose to form a low clay cliff ... the macerated piles of seaweed reminded me of an area at Burton Marsh in Cheshire where a Buff-bellied Pipit lingered a few years ago ...

And sure enough there feeding among the seaweed was a smart bright Water Pipit along with about four petrosus Rock Pipits ...

As we stood on the sand a respectful distance away the birds worked their way closer ...

... the bold white supercillium stood out, emphasized by the dark lores ...

... the leg colour was clearly dark although not actually black ... the contrastingly warm brown of the rump was a constantly visible feature ...

... as the bird turned, the white minimally streaked underparts came into view ...

... and the clear white throat showed up ... and perhaps just a hint of grey beginning to show through on the nape ...

... posing nicely on a pale rock the long bill was more obvious ...

... and turning to show the almost rufous rump ...

sometimes probing among the seaweed and sometimes jumping to catch a fly ...

... and then alternating between the grassy and seaweed areas to feed ...

Ring-necked Duck at Tindale Tarn ...

The male Ring-necked Duck that was found on Tindale Tarn at RSPB Geltsdale yesterday was still present today as the early morning light brightened ...

Initially it swam around with its head tucked in ...

... and then bobbed around at the west end of the tarn in the company of some Tufted Ducks ...

... while mostly out of sight from the viewing screen, it did occasionally swim by ...

... then some feeding action in a reed-fringed bay ...

The first Ring-necked Duck for Cumbria was a male at Sunbiggin Tarn on 4-7 April 1982 ; the first female was on 24 April 2007 at Campfield Marsh ...

... with the complexities of returning and wandering birds it becomes difficult to determine the number of 'new' birds that have arrived in the county ... it may well be fewer than ten ...

The Cardurnock Todd's Canada Goose ... and some taxonomic background ...

The Todd's Canada Goose that Nick Franklin found on the north Cumbrian Solway a few weeks ago showed well in the late afternoon sunshine two days ago ...

It was with about 2000 Barnacle Geese but the terrain was favourable ... a flat grassy field with short turf where all the birds remained in view ...

... even when its head was down the dark plainish mantle made it relatively easy to pick out ... compared with feral Canada Goose ( Atlantic Canada Goose - Branta canadensis canadensis ) the pale bars on the mantle appeared finer and more crisp ... the bill was long but slightly less broad based than that of the nominate form ...

... it was considerably larger than the Barnacle Geese ...

After the flock was flushed the birds soon returned but the Todd's looked unsettled for a while ...

... the long thin neck was very apparent ...

The overall appearance of this bird seemed very much in line with individuals of this form B.c.interior that I had seen in the Pilling area of Lancashire on 2 Jan 2017 ...

... and in the Loaningfoot area of Dumfries & Galloway on 1 Oct 2013 ...

Looking back over the years, the early part of the 21st century saw considerable interest in Canada Goose forms and Todd's Canada Goose was discussed in two articles in Birding World in 2001 ...

Then in 2006 Harold Hanson published his monumental work that reflected 50 years of study ...

... this tome along with the one that followed a year later identified 6 species of Canada Goose with the canadensis group consisting of 78 sub-species and the hutchinsii group comprising 84 sub-species ... as the cover photo suggests, the book contains lots of pictures of dead geese and quite a lot of pictures of Canadian bogs - not the lightest of reads !

Today his work seems to be viewed as a step too far ...

The Helm guide of 2014 illustrates some forms including Todd's but the illustration left me feeling not much further forward ...

The excellent work of Sebastien Reeber 2015 gives much detail and highlights some of the ID difficulties particularly regarding the B.c.parvipes form ( confusingly called Lesser Canada Goose despite being part of the canadensis - Canada Goose species rather than the hutchinsii - Cackling Goose species which was formerly known as Lesser Canada Goose ).  He describes parvipes as presenting on of the most difficult ID challenges and interestingly mentions intergradation between Todd's and this form.

The current page on the BBRC website is revealing ...

... so Reeber is the man and we should be thinking interior / parvipes