Flash wader fest day 2

Usually I only see curlew flying over Pennington Flash and when they do land it's always on the Spit, so I was delighted to see this bird on the boat club foreshore this morning. Also here, two little ringed plovers and three oystercatchers.

There were around 500 sand martins over the flash but still no swallows or house martins, but new in were two singing willow warblers on the ruck, my first at the flash this year.

There's been records of a single drake common scoter at the flash on and off for the past couple of weeks but if it's the same bird then it frequently goes missing. To confuse the issue there has clearly been a passage of these birds in recent weeks, with a pair last week and five birds the week before, so it's difficult to be sure either way.

There's been a drake mandarin following a pair of mallards around for a few days now, and I assumed that it was the bird that was occasionally present last year which also visited Plank Lane marina, and which also stayed close to a pair of mallard. However that bird had a purple ring on it's left leg, whereas todays bird does not have a ring. In the photo below you can see the ring on the eclipse plumage bird and it doesn't look like the sort of ring which would easily come off, so I wonder if this is in fact a different bird?