AS A child, I spent hours on wet school holidays doing those “spot the difference” puzzles, examining two seemingly identical pictures to pick out the slight differences between them: a three-legged chair in one, a missing moustache in the other.
Well, all those hours of concentration stand me in good stead now, as I'm learning to play the adult version for birders - looking intently at a flock of birds, trying to spot the odd one out.
This was the game I was playing at the weekend, trying to pick out the “foreigner” amongst a flock of Eurasian Teal.
These perky little duck were dressed in their winter finest. After spending the autumn in “eclipse” plumage, a subtle brown colouring which makes them merge in among the females, the drakes moult into their smart breeding plumage for the winter, starting the process of finding a mate for the spring.
So there they were, decked out in their Sunday best: a glorious chestnut coloured head with green sides picked out with yellow piping, a white horizontal stripe along the side of a grey body, and a black-bordered yellow patch under the tail.
A shaft of sunlight broke through the lowering clouds shining on them like a theatre spotlight, making their feather colours glow richly.
But one of their number was the odd one out.
Lurking in the flock of Eurasian Teal was one Green-winged Teal, a lone American vagrant so closely resembling the Eurasian Teal that it has only recently been classified as a separate species in its own right.
Visually, the best way to distinguish the Green-wing is to check its stripe: a white vertical line down the side of the breast rather than the Eurasian Teal's horizontal stripe along the flank.
So there I was, painstakingly checking stripes on each and every individual bird.
Chestnut head, green flash, horizontal stripe. Next.
Chestnut head, green flash, horizontal stripe. Next.
Chestnut head, green flash, vertical stripe. Next.
Woah, back up again, and take a second look.
Yes, there was an obvious vertical stripe, how could I have missed it before?
This was my “odd one out”, a Green-winged Teal, blown over from America by strong winds but perhaps not recently, as a similar bird, almost certainly this particular drake, has been seen here occasionally during the last few winters.
Having identified it, I could relax and just take pleasure in enjoying the excellent views of this beautiful bird.
But then my mobile buzzed with a text message: an American Wigeon seen amongst a flock of Eurasian Wigeon in Gwynedd.
Hey ho, here we go again……
