Dapper Little Duck Enjoys Time Out From Captivity

Published on: 31 Jan, 2018
Updated on: 30 Jan, 2018

A dapper little duck that the Dragon’s birdwatching correspondent Malcolm Fincham spotted near Guildford made him realise it must have escaped from a nearby private collection.

Due to his diligence it has been recaptured and and is now back with its rightful ownes!

The drake Smew seen near Guildford. To quote from The Immigrant Song, by the rock band Led Zeppelin: “We come from the land of the ice and snow, from the midnight sun where the hot springs flow.”

Malcolm takes up the story….

A surprising sight for me, at first glance, on January 22 (2018), was an unusual looking duck on a small stretch of water on my local travels though a village on the outskirts of Guildford.

I instantly recognised it to be drake smew – and a moment of curiosity soon turned to realisation.

I guessed that this dapper little beauty must have escaped from a nearby stretch of water, the owners of which have a private collection of various ornamental waterfowl.

The drake smew, with its ‘cracked ice’ and ‘panda-eyed’ appearance, is unmistakable, and looks very black-and-white in flight.

The sew happily swims across the lake.

Although pinioned to prevent it from flight, this particular one had devised an escape plan and had made its way along an adjoining stream, eventually finding a lake with an ample supply of small fish to feed on.

Smews are members of a group of ducks known as sawbills. Their bill has a hooked tip and serrated edges. These serrations help the birds hold on to their slippery fish prey when diving for them.

Dimorphic in their colouration, females and immature males are grey birds with a chestnut coloured forehead.

The smew catches a fish.

During summer months, smews live and breed in the lands of the midnight sun in northern Scandinavia and Russia, nesting on small inland lakes and lagoons.

The onset of winter forces them to migrate south to escape the freezing weather there. Sometimes birds move here in times of exceptionally cold weather in Holland and Denmark.

It usually takes a surge of freezing weather to drive decent numbers of smews over the North Sea or English Channel to the UK.

A female smew previously photographed by Malcolm Fincham. Dimorphic in their colouration females are grey birds with a chestnut forehead.

Generally, smews see the UK as a peripheral part of their range. We don’t figure much on their radars. The odd thing is that smews feature quite prominently on the radar of a keen, birdwatching enthusiast, when a true wild specimen graces our shores.

Although having seen the occasional true wild smew on my travels, this was an outstanding opportunity to see such a gorgeous duck, without having to use my binoculars or a “scope” as it fished the lake for sticklebacks.

Even taking a short video clip of what I feel, although not unrestrained, was still a truly delightful bird to observe.

Having informed its rightful owner, it was recaptured just a few days later.