Lesser Scaup - Blast From The Past Finds

Lesser Scaup is a species that has gone from significant rarity to...dare I say, mundane?

Better optics, greater awareness and digital photography have all undoubtedly made their contributions to this scenario, but the end result is clear...Lesser Scaup, today, is a multi individual per annum rarity, often in double digit levels.

I had seen a couple of individuals around the place before finding my own, with my first self found individual falling on November 26th 2006.

26.11.2006

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

Cliché perhaps, but it was nonetheless the case.

Having just moved back from Cork in late 2006, stopping in to knock lake in Dublin in the last hour of "light", with heavy winds turning what is normally a placid enough little loch into a maelstrom, I nonetheless managed to pick up a Greater Scaup and....an alarmingly peaky headed juv duck with it and the tufty flock.

This was a Lesser Scaup...the head shape was screaming it at me, even though I was only getting intermittent views and it rose up and down between wave crests in seasickening fashion. Then towards the dying of the light...one brief and furious flap gave the impression of a dusky handed wing bar.

I let a couple of friends and family know I had a Lesser Scaup and carried on home in the dark.

At home I began to gen up on the available references I had, all of which I was already familiar with and nothing jumping out as contradictory.

I knew that there had been a relatively recent article in Birding World (at the time I was not a subscriber, but in the end I became one and bought all the back issues...by the hammer of Thor I miss that magazine. 😢 Bring it back I say.)

I called Paul Kelly, living not too far away, to ask if he had any Lesser Scaup references, particularly that article and his response was "Why? Have you been to Knock Lake?"

As it transpired, this bird had already been around a couple of weeks now and had been seen several times by him and Eric Dempsey, both of whom were writing it off as a Tufted Duck.

I made clear my opinion that it was a Lesser Scaup.

Over the course of the evening, PK called me 3 more times, each time saying "I'm sure it's just a tufty.", whilst Dempsey calling was incapable of going in any direction. 

I knew I was going back in the morning regardless, so said I would try and get shots and send them on. 

The next morning was bright, calm and sunny, the storm having fully moved on, and the chop on the lake seriously reduced (though as you can see, some residual motion).

I managed to get closer to the bird than the previous evening, and got some decent shots (though not of the open wing), but it was a done deal.

I made my way back to Ashbourne, got on the net, uploaded my pics and sent them to the lads.

Their response was disappointing. 

"Can we send these to Muller?"

🤦

Oh FFS. 

I left them to their guru, and headed out to celebrate my first for Dublin with a La Bucca burger and a nice pint. 😎 It's not every day you find a first for the capital after all.

Lesser Scaup - Juvenile - Juv LS was a fairly unfamiliar plumage back then, certainly to me, and undoubtedly to most who twitched the bird over the couple of weeks it remained in Dublin. However, over the years, more and more juvs or close to juv plumage birds have been found.

Who knows where it moved on to in mid-December? I hunted for it on every available lake I could think of in the north east and mid-lands, to no avail (but found a few other goodies as a consequence).

In the years since I've found a few Lesser Scaup around Ireland, in Cork, Galway and the midlands, but it was a recent bird in Sligo that was most memorable.

22.12.2022

It was on a visit home at Christmas that myself and Hanna made our way to Leitrim for Rob Vaughan's Double-Crested Cormorant. 

Double-Crested Cormorant

Successfully ticking that bird off, we carried on to Raghly in Sligo in search of geese and duck.

We missed the Cackling, but saw Green-Winged Teal and a range of decent scarce species for our trouble.

Driving back to Dublin that afternoon, we swung off at Lough Arrow as our last site of the day, and we're delighted to find the south bay absolutely choc-a-bloc full of duck.

And there, right in the middle of them, was a cracking male Lesser Scaup. A tick for Hanna, we enjoyed the bird for about 20 minutes before a fisherman's boat put all the duck up and saw them move out into the main lake. 

Lesser Scaup

Finding a tick for d'wife, and the end of an enjoyable day in great surroundings makes for a great memory. 

Whilst Lesser Scaup may be a run of the mill rarity these days, as a finds tick it's still up there as a bird not everyone will attain, though they do seem to be increasing further.