Common Pochard Aythya ferina (RBBP)
Fairly common but declining winter visitor, and a scarce breeding species found mainly in gravel and clay pits.
Common Pochard at Water's Edge CP : left, male March 20th 2016 and right, female July 5th 2016 ringed and "saddled" at St Philbert de Grand Lieu
near Nantes (France) November 25th November 2015 (photographs and details courtesy of Graham Catley).
Pochard has shown up and down fluctuations in both breeding and wintering populations over the last 30 years. The Atlas put the wintering population at 2,000 birds in the late 1980s increasing to 2,500 by 1997. Over the same period the breeding population doubled from 25 to 50 pairs. More recently the wintering population has fallen to around 500 birds and RBBP records show an average of 22 pairs per year bred during the period 2013-2017, a halving over 20 years. WeBS Online data shows the English Pochard wintering population peaked in 1995/96 and has since declined by two thirds up to 2018/19. The decrease is attributed to Russian birds wintering further east due to climate change.
(Account as per new Birds of Lincolnshire (2021), included September 2022)