Staff and volunteers in the Visitor Centre have fielded a few queries in recent days about a male pochard (pictured below) with a facial abnormality. Rather than the typical coppery chestnut this individual's head had a muddy colouration - and for good reason...
Ailing pochard? Photograph by Edward Flatters.
Someone offered that it was losing feathers or suffering from a fungal infection. Happily for the pochard and for the concerned visitors the bird was suffering from nothing worse than a mud splattered face. Pochard are diving ducks and grub around in the substrate for tasty morsels - if you watch closely a plume of silt often billows up from the lake bed when they dive. In places Radipole silt is claggy and occasionally they will surface resembling a duck that has just copped a mud pie full in the fizzog.
For comparison below is a male pochard in its fully preened, buffed and blow dried finery. A handsome fellow indeed.