ML477623851

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

*mega; 4th Pribilof Islands record; 3rd for St. Paul Island and first photos of a live bird. Last record for St. Paul Island was four birds in 1961. Nathan Goldberg and I initially flushed the bird out of marsh grass at close proximity from Cup Pond and we looked at each other right away and I asked, "did that look weird to you?" The wing was strikingly dark compared to our regular Green-winged Teal due to the narrow speculum and the barely noticeable chestnut leading edge of the speculum. The duck had gone into Saucer Pond amongst many Green-winged Teals and the facial pattern immediately stood out to me with the distinct white lore. While working it for photos it moved into Pumphouse Lake, back into Saucer Pond, and lastly (apparently) Rocky Lake. I presume this bird has most likely been around but gone unnoticed until tonight, due to no recent favorable winds. Additional notes by Nathan: Upon it's initial flush from Cup Pond, we both recognized the calls the bird made in flight to be different than those we hear near-daily from the expected Green-winged Teals. Upon refinding the bird on Saucer Pond, after most of the Green-winged Teal had flushed, the Baikal remained and was making soft calls that were audible even at a serious distance. I took a short recording using my iPhone 12, which is included here (thanks to Jay McGowan for helping process the file and making the calls more audible).

Technical information

Model

Canon EOS R5

Lens

EF300mm f/4L IS USM

ISO

1000

Focal length

300 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/4.5

Shutter speed

1/1250 sec

Dimensions

920 pixels x 614 pixels

Original file size

342.27 KB