Frampton's Puzzling Podiceps

On the morning of the 24th Scott Bailey was enjoying the views from our reedbed hide when he saw this pair of birds.....

Grebe sp. and Little Grebe - Scott Bailey 

Understandably he got very excited and assumed the birds were the same species. After a quick look through the books the differences were noted and he correctly identified the smaller of the two as a Little Grebe, but what was the other? 

Scott has only seen one Black-necked Grebe before, that was last year at Frampton but much further away, and understandably thought this was what it was initially. Upon reviewing some pictures he had taken of the bird in flight and going through the books he came to the conclusion that it was a Slavonian Grebe, but more about that later.....  

I made a routine stop at the Visitor Centre later that morning and was told a Slavonian Grebe had been seen, but Scott had left site by now with his camera so I wasn't able to have a look at his photos. Simon Wilson and I had a good search but couldn't locate it though I wasn't too concerned as I knew there were pictures and they would be passed to us. 'I'll id the bird from the pics' I thought, 'Easy...' How very wrong I was. 

I got a call from Simon later that afternoon as he was closing down the Visitor Centre to let me know he had relocated the bird and he thought it was a Black-necked Grebe. Could there be two birds?

I popped down with Georgina and Molly and armed with books we gave the bird a thoroughly good grilling. We could see all the plumage features that are captured in Scott's phot above, though seen from much further away. The head appeared to be that of a Black-necked Grebe but the bill was that of a Slavonian.... or is that a slight upturn in the bill....? The posture would change frequently as it sat up alert looking like it was going to take off at any second, before slumping back into a more relaxed position. Due to this, it was very hard to go on head shape and structure. All very confusing indeed. After about half an hour I was none the wiser with my identification and just wanted to get the news out so people could come and have a look. I tweeted that there was a Black-necked Grebe on the reserve but still had niggles even though this is what it appeared to be. 

I popped back to the office and had a look at the BTO's excellent Winter Grebe Identification video. After watching it I was sure it was a Slavonian, but then I watched it again and just got more confused.... I couldn't say with confidence that it was one or the other, but could anyone else?

I tweeted an appallingly bad iScoped image of the bird (below) and the initial reaction was Slavonian.

 
Grebe sp. - Toby Collett

I was still umming and ahhing over the bird as I arrived at work the next morning, and went out to try and find it but no luck :( 

Fortunately Scott had sent me the pictures and I felt happy that I could finally stick a name to it..... The first one I saw did nothing to help.......

Grebe sp. - Scott Bailey 

Although a fantastic picture, it didn't show any features that I couldn't see the evening before. Black-necked head and Slavonian bill :S The upright posture lent itself to Black-necked Grebe so maybe it was one? There was a second picture, alluded to above, in the e-mail though that, I think, seals the identification beyond any doubt....

Slavonian Grebe - Scott Bailey 

The picture above is excellent and without it I personally wouldn't have been happy with a confirmed identification. The reduced white in the wing, confined to secondaries only, and the white patch on the forewing (just visible on the right wing) are distinctive plumage features of Slavonian Grebe. This is what Black-necked Grebes look like in flight and here is another Slavonian showing the distinctive wing pattern.

So the identification is confirmed (and correctly by Scott at the time), but due to it being such an instructive bird I wanted to share it with the wider birding community and see if they came to the same conclusion I did.

I tweeted Scott's picture of the bird in the water and also started a thread on BirdForum to generate some discussion.

I would like to make it clear that it was never my intention to deceive or trick anyone into making an identification. I posted the non flight image only as that was all I saw initially and wanted to know if I had missed a feature/s that could help me identify a similar bird in the future. Thank you to everyone that contributed to my posts and I hope the discussion doesn't stop here....

Interestingly a quick tot up of those who weren't afraid to stick their neck out and call it gives 20 -5 in favour of Black-necked Grebe.....

Do we need to rethink how we identify autumn Black-necked and Slavonian Grebes and off the back of this how do county recorders look at past and future records? What descriptions/photographs would you need to provide/they need to receive to be happy that the correct identification has been reached?