The Pochard.
The Pochard is listed as Vulnerable on the European Red List and the wintering population of Pochard continues to fall sharply with no sign of recovery. I actually saw a sighting in our area recently, refered to as a 'Mega' and last year was the first on record that the bird failed to achieve a three figure count anywhere in Lancashire where the main wintering sites are at Dockacres/Pine Lake and Seaforth on Merseyside, the flocks of which dropped by almost 50% on 2015 numbers.
The loss of wintering distribution of the Pochard is most prominent in Ireland where there was a loss of almost 50% of 10km squares occupied, and driven by a large scale decline at the key wintering site of Lough Neagh, the largest freshwater lake anywhere in the British Isles with a surface area of 392 square kilometres, which has lost up to 20,000 Pochard over recent years.
A small number of c.500 pairs of Pochard breed in Britain which is much more important as a winter habitat hosting 25% of the NW European population, with around 60,000 in Britain.
Personal sightings of the Pochard over the past 3 years have only amounted to six records, by far the best one was a drake 06 Feb 2015 on Conder Pool....
14 Nov 2016 Blea Tarn Reservoir two drake
19 Jan 2016 Canal Basin Glasson a drake
16 Feb 2016 Canal Basin a pair
03 Jan 2017 Canal Basin a female
17 Feb 2017 Canal Basin a drake, being the only Pochard I've seen this year.
I was prompted to dig out a post about the Pochard on Birds2blog in February 2016 last year, it makes some interesting reading Here
The Pochard is listed as Vulnerable on the European Red List and the wintering population of Pochard continues to fall sharply with no sign of recovery. I actually saw a sighting in our area recently, refered to as a 'Mega' and last year was the first on record that the bird failed to achieve a three figure count anywhere in Lancashire where the main wintering sites are at Dockacres/Pine Lake and Seaforth on Merseyside, the flocks of which dropped by almost 50% on 2015 numbers.
The loss of wintering distribution of the Pochard is most prominent in Ireland where there was a loss of almost 50% of 10km squares occupied, and driven by a large scale decline at the key wintering site of Lough Neagh, the largest freshwater lake anywhere in the British Isles with a surface area of 392 square kilometres, which has lost up to 20,000 Pochard over recent years.
A small number of c.500 pairs of Pochard breed in Britain which is much more important as a winter habitat hosting 25% of the NW European population, with around 60,000 in Britain.
Personal sightings of the Pochard over the past 3 years have only amounted to six records, by far the best one was a drake 06 Feb 2015 on Conder Pool....
14 Nov 2016 Blea Tarn Reservoir two drake
19 Jan 2016 Canal Basin Glasson a drake
16 Feb 2016 Canal Basin a pair
03 Jan 2017 Canal Basin a female
17 Feb 2017 Canal Basin a drake, being the only Pochard I've seen this year.
I was prompted to dig out a post about the Pochard on Birds2blog in February 2016 last year, it makes some interesting reading Here
Birding!....Who me....what birding....when....where.
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