Black scoter, Hoylake

Photo: Putative hybrid black x common scoter. 

This morning I was up early and walking across Hoylake beach at 6:30am. It was a glorious morning, with blue skies and wide open views across Liverpool Bay, but more importantly it was approaching low tide and this was virtually the only part of the day where I had any hope of seeing North Wirral's black scoter. 

This North American sea duck has been offshore here for about a week, associating with a few hundred common scoters and two hours either side of low tide is the only safe time to see it. It's a vast beach and I was walking out to the tideline which was over a mile (1.5km) offshore. You need to be sure of your tide times out here, because there are channels behind you which fill as the tide comes in and if you're not careful can leave you on a rapidly diminishing island of sand. Following the tide out is the safest way to do it but you still need to be extremely careful and aware of the state of the tide.

Eventually I reached the tideline and found many small groups of common scoter spread all over the sea, stretching away into the distance towards the wind farm. Some were just shimmering dots and identification of these birds was just impossible, even with a telescope. Fortunately though, an apparent trait of black scoter is the habit of staying close inshore so I was hopeful that it would be one of the closer birds, and so it proved, but not without much head scratching and mis-identifications!

Photo: Common scoter.

The first problem was that there were common scoter out there with far more yellow on the bill than I expected. So for example, compare the second and third birds from the right in the photo above, not only the bill patterns but also the head and bill shape. These birds were amongst the closest I saw all morning, but even so, they never stopped either bobbing up and down, diving or chasing each other, allowing just split second views and in these circumstances it would be easy to think that the second right bird must be the black scoter. I spent a lot of time videoing and photographing this flock before I realised my mistake.

Fortunately I spotted Sean, the original finder of the black scoter about 500m to the west of me and he seemed to be watching something so I headed over. It was indeed the black scoter that he had been watching for half an hour. It was alone and at close range but initially asleep when I arrived, however after 10 minutes or so it woke up. It had a large swollen blob of yellow on the bill and was very different to the earlier bird that I had tried to turn into black scoter. I was very happy with the identification. 

We watched it for another 10 minutes or so until finally it took off and flew east, more or less to where I had been standing earlier. I wish I'd left it there to be honest but I decided to walk back and try for another look and possibly get some photos. 

Photo: Putative hybrid black x common scoter. 

After about 200m I scanned the sea and saw a bird with a bright yellow bill. Surely this was it? I knew that it had flown further than this but I assumed that while I had been walking it must have flown part way back. Anyway, this was obviously it....... except that it wasn't!

I spent the rest of my time videoing and photographing this bird, and chatting to a couple of other birders who had turned up and who seemed equally convinced. 

Photo: Putative hybrid black x common scoter. 

Intriguingly, when I got home and examined my photos, they all showed a very bright yellow bill, but with black marks. The bill of the black scoter I saw with Sean had no black marks, so what was going on? My photos weren't very good quality so perhaps the black marks weren't real, shadows maybe? However, a little research revealed that others were also confused by this bird and there were other photos online of what was clearly the same bird, which some birders were considering to be a hybrid, though aberrant common scoter was also discussed. It certainly seems more like a potential hybrid than an aberrant common scoter but who knows?

Black scoter, Hoylake Photo © Sean O'Hara

In hindsight it's not only the black marks in the yellow that are wrong with the hybrid, the shape of the yellow blob is also wrong. In the genuine article as seen in Sean's excellent photo above, the yellow clearly looks like a section of a globe, or a quarter of a pizza painted yellow as I prefer to think of it! The yellow in the hybrid scoter's bill is longer and more knobbly and not like any pizza I've ever eaten!

Looking through various photos on social media, it's actually quite easy to spot the hybrid even when the bird is more distant and the black marks can't be clearly seen. Not easy in the field though, when the birds are disappearing in the waves, chasing each other around, diving frequently and often turned the wrong way. If the birds had been more distant and the light had been wrong, e.g. in the evening, it would certainly be beyond me to pick out.

It was all very interesting yet also a little frustrating. The black scoter that I had been watching with Sean had flown around 500m east, but I hadn't walked that far, I'd been distracted by the hybrid and missed my opportunity to photograph the genuine bird. Never mind, at least I saw the genuine bird even if I didn't get a photo.

Also on the sea today, a stunning drake long-tailed duck and a few great crested grebes. As we watched, a stream of meadow pipits came in off the sea, some landing on the beach, others flying inland.

Of course the time of low tide changes every day, but I wanted to get there on an early morning low tide because then the sun is behind you. When low tide is in the late afternoon, the sun sets over the sea making viewing even more difficult, and in bright sunlight some of the common scoter can appear to have deceptively yellow bills. Imagine the problems that I had today compounded by the birds being against the sun.