Thanks to heavy early morning rain and the threat of more rain by mid-afternoon, it had been a very quiet day with few visitors on Brownsea. I was manning the videoscope in the Avocet hide, but I was the only person in the hide. To keep myself occupied, I started photographing some of the male Teal which were close to the hide and which were in various degrees of eclipse plumage. If you search for common species of Wildfowl, most photos online are pristine males and to a lesser extent females. I'm sure part of this is down to some photographers who aren't Birders, being unable to identify Ducks which aren't obvious adult males. Whereas, for others a Duck in grotty-looking plumage just isn't worth taking the photo in the first place. So, to combat that, here are some eclipse Teal.
After this Blog Post is posted, it will be interesting to see it Google prefers to show me photos of pretty male Teal, rather than these photos, which I search for "eclipse Teal". I'm not optimistic.