View From The Shed by Shaun Finnie - RINGO'S OUR STAR

RINGO'S OUR STAR

Once upon a time there were Four Lads Who Shook the World. They were, in their day, the four most famous people on the planet. One of them took the name 'Ringo' as he famously sported unusual rings. If none of this means anything to you then I'm guessing that you're under forty. Get an old person to explain it to you.

Once upon a different time there was a drake Ring-Necked Duck with a sense of adventure. Let's call him Ringo because he had some particularly striking white rings around his beak. Note, his beak, not his neck. Yes, there is the slightest of slight brown rings around his purple-black neck but it's almost undetectable unless you're within touching distance. Whoever thought that name up was having a very bad day.

At the end of Winter, Young Ringo decided to take a journey. He left his home somewhere around the borders of the United States and Canada and headed vaguely south-eastwards, aiming for Central America or maybe the West Indies. That sounded a lovely warm area in which to spend the next few months. He started off well and flew swift and strong for a few days, trusting his instincts as only migratory birds can. But something went wrong. Maybe his migratory mechanism went haywire somehow? Or perhaps he got caught up in a winter storm that deposited him in the strong airflow of the Gulf Stream? Or maybe he'd got sick of spending his holidays in the strong sun and fancied a taste of Yorkshire? Whatever the reason, Ringo flew way, way off-course, so much so that he crossed the Atlantic Ocean and only decided to put the brakes on when he was over the RSPB's Old Moor reserve in South Yorkshire's Dearne Valley. Who can blame him? If you were a duck that was a full continent away from where you should be, Old Moor would offer a much better landing strip than most. That was two months ago and, at the time of writing, he's still here. Let's hope he hangs around at least until this blog is published or I'm going to look a bit daft.

To human eyes that are used to seeing Tufted Ducks, at first glance our Ringo looks a lot like one of those. He's a black and white diving duck, just like our beloved Tufties, the duck that 19^th Century people called the 'Magpie Diver'. It would be easy to just scan right past him in search for something more exotic. But in truth he's probably the most exotic bird on our reserve at the moment. There are only around four other wild birds of his kind in the country at the time of writing.

Take a closer look at him and you'll notice several differences between the two species. Overall the American bird looks somewhat bigger and shinier, as if he's got a plastic body that's been wrapped in cling film. Also, whereas the male Tufted duck has a white, brick-shaped patch on his flank, the male Ring-Necked's white section is much more curved and stretches right up his neck in a bright spur. His head is taller and more pointy than a Tufty's as well but, most significantly, he doesn't have that tell-tail tuft. His head feathers are slicked straight back without even a hint of that sticky-out pigtail that give our local version their name. If you want to see him, just look for a Tufted Duck that looks a bit 'wrong' and is spending his time with the Pochards in the Willow Pool at Wath Ings. Then try to confirm the details above. Or you could just ask one of our volunteers or the other birders in the hide to point him out. He's very popular at the moment, there's bound to be someone else looking for him.

Don't look for him among our native Tufted Ducks though; he's mostly shunned their company. This is understandable, as although they're superficially similar, he would never have encountered a Tufty in his native North America. They appear over that side of The Pond even less frequently than his kind turn up over here. Instead he's chosen to spend much of his time among our resident Pochards. Again, this makes sense when you realise how closely Pochards resemble the American Redhead Duck, which is a very close relative of the Ring-Neck, both in genetics and geography. Indeed, female Pochards and Redheads are very difficult to tell apart. Ringo is proving this here by taking a shine to one particular lady Pochard. Ducks being ducks, I wouldn't be surprised if we had some unusual hybrid ducklings with tiny rings around their beaks in Old Moor's Willow Pool soon.

Of course it's possible that our plucky little ducky has simply escaped or been released from a zoo or private collection. He might even have been born here in Britain and sold like a bag of flour or a toaster. That option isn't half as romantic as the duck-on-a-gap-year version but hey, it's a sad possibility. Who wants to hear that though when we can wallow in images of an intrepid adventurer striking out into the unknown for lands far flung that few of his family have ever been before? Go, little Ringo, Go! I'm adding him to my wild bird year list, put it that way.

But if you come to our RSPB site in hopes of adding Ringo to your own sighting list, be aware that he's very elusive. It's entirely possible that you could come to see him and go home without your hoped-for tick. Some people have been two, three, six or more times without catching sight of the little lad. It took me eleven attempts before I clapped eyes on him. I do though have a reputation for abject failure when it comes to seeing whatever species I've gone searching for. I keep my sanity by telling myself that even if I don't spot my target bird, I know that whatever I see will be interesting and magnificent. With that in mind, here's a list of all the birds (hopefully still including Ringo the Ring-Neck) that have been seen at Old Moor in the last few days).