First-winter female Lesser Scaup on Monalty Lough, Co. Monaghan

I couldn’t wait for the winter to finish up. Since autumn 2023 had drawn to a close, I had put a serious amount of time into checking lake after lake with little reward. Other than a pretty successful day in Cavan in late December 2023, where I managed to find a Great White Egret and a pair of Ring-necked Ducks within half an hour of each other, I was struggling big time to dig out anything of note.

My weekends throughout the winter consisted of checking as many lakes as I could, be it in Monaghan or Cavan or both. I love birding my local patch around Carrickmacross, despite almost never seeing anything. In terms of rarities, I reckon Co. Monaghan would be in the bottom five counties in terms of potential but despite this, I would be lost without my patch! I try my best to check Monalty Lough and Moylan Lough 4-5 times a week throughout the year. It is usually the small things that make patch birding great, be it a brief Black-tailed Godwit or a pair of Redshank in a flooded field. Both species which I have only seen once in the county.

Of course, though, it is the scarcer birds that I am after and with consistent, regular patching I have had some nice surprises over the past few years. Short-eared Owl, Goosander, two each of Siberian Chiffchaff, Wood Sandpiper, Long-tailed Duck, and Garganey and double figures of Ring-necked Ducks. Nothing major but enough to keep me occupied.

My target each winter is to find a Lesser Scaup. The reason for this is because 90% of my birding is spent checking flocks of Aythya ducks. In December 2021, I finally found a Lesser Scaup, a lovely drake on Round Lough, near Belturbet, Co. Cavan. Anybody who knows me will know that since then, I have been harping on about how I would love to find a female Lesser Scaup given the fact that they are much trickier to prove, and much rarer than drakes (overlooked?). I had completely given up hope of finding one this winter, as despite several visits to Cavan throughout the winter I failed miserably to find a decent duck.

Monalty Lough is almost always the first place in Monaghan to get Sand Martins each year. In the previous two years, I year-ticked Sand Martin on the 18^th of March, so I set out to try to beat that date in 2024. I was checking Monalty Lough almost daily throughout March, and I was keeping an eye on a small flock of Tufted Ducks, but not holding much hope that they would drag in the mobile drake Bufflehead that had been seen in previous days in Westmeath and Cavan. On the evening of the 15^th of March, I spent over an hour at the lake. The small flock of Tufted Duck looked about as uninspiring as it had all winter. With no Sand Martins, I headed home.

The 16^th of March was the Saturday of the long bank holiday weekend. Green-winged Teal is the last of the regular American ducks that I have yet to find in Ireland, so I spent the day flogging Dundalk Bay to no avail. I gave up and headed for home. It was getting late, but I decided to give Monalty Lough a quick check at 17:45 that evening. I walked along the road, chatting away on the phone to Peter Phillips about potential Western Palearctic trips. I walked down to the southeastern end of the lough and scanned the Tufted Duck flock with my bins. I was immediately drawn to an Aythya with an obvious white blaze at the base of the bill. This bird was fresh in as I hadn’t seen it on any of the previous evenings. I told Peter that I needed to double-check this duck but that it was likely going to be nothing of note. I put the phone down and had a proper look at it, given that I only had my binoculars, and it was a little bit distant, it was tricky to be sure, but I was 99% sure that I could see grey coming through on the upperparts.

The wavy grey pattern can be seen coming through on the upperparts. 

I hurried back to the car to get the scope. The light was fading fast and given how mobile ducks can get in mid-late March I was under pressure to nail it. I quickly got the scope onto the bird in question from the layby which meant distant viewing. Almost the second that I got the bird in the scope, it flapped. There was an obvious divide between the white secondaries and the grey primaries!! This quickened the pulse. I ran back up the road towards the southeastern corner, thinking that this was a bloody Lesser Scaup! Only to find that when I scanned the flock, there was nothing that remotely recalled a female-type Lesser Scaup. The minutes passed and I started to think that I must have been mistaken. After what must have been ten minutes of panicked scanning, I had it! This absolutely perfect-looking female Lesser Scaup swam out of the reeds looking mega! Despite it looking the part, I was still hesitant to call it. I still needed to document everything before putting the news out. 

Comparison with a female Tufted Duck. Note the difference in head shape, bill pattern, and colouration.

The south-eastern end of Monalty Lough, the Lesser Scaup is in there somewhere.

I could see the bill pattern perfectly; the black was restricted to the nail only. I was able to get shots of this fairly easily. The head shape was about as perfect as it could have been and was consistent on all angles, being almost triangular in shape with an obvious peak at the rear of the head. From back on, the head was very narrow behind the eyes, much more so than the Tufted Ducks, almost giving the impression of the number eight. The colouration was a much darker shade of brown compared to the almost gingery tinge to the head of a Tufted Duck. There was a very small pale patch at the ear coverts reminiscent of female Greater Scaup. The white blaze at the base of the bill extended down each side of the bill giving the impression of a moustache!

The white band at the base of the bill was very prominent and is initially what drew my attention to this bird.

The upper parts were brilliant. There was a wavy grey pattern going through the upperparts lined with very fine vermiculations on the back and flanks (something I could see on my scope views, but I was not able to photograph this feature until the next morning). The contrast between the flanks and upper parts points to this bird being a first winter. This bird continuously preened its vent area which appeared to still have some remaining juvenile feathering, that had yet to be preened off, otherwise, the belly was clean.

The bird started to preen, and I knew it was about to flap its wings. I started videoing and waited. The bird flapped and showed exactly the same pattern that I had seen on it earlier, a lovely sharp divide between the white secondaries and the grey primaries! Done and dusted! The first record for Monaghan.

This is the clincher! The sharp divide between the white secondaries and the grey primaries.

I rang Dean McDonnell, a local birder, and told him that I had just found a Lesser Scaup on Monalty Lough, he managed to connect with it just before the light went. Just before putting the news out, I sent the pictures to a few friends to make sure that nobody disputed the identification, which they didn’t.

What a brilliant buzz and it is exactly what patch birding is all about. It is hard to believe that given all the effort that I had put into Cavan this winter, the bird that I had been hoping for shows up 2.5km from my front door!

This little beaut was last reported on Friday the 22^nd of March, although I was unable to locate it that evening and unfortunately, I never saw it again. Many people managed to enjoy this bird during its short stay. Hopefully, it won’t be too long before I have another bird worth travelling for in Monaghan again.

What a bird!