Male Long-tailed Duck at Pennington Flash

As you can see from our website header, Leigh Ornithological Society's logo has a male Long-tailed Duck in flight on it, and so it's nice to actually see one in our recording area for once. This one has been showing well at Pennington Flash for a few days now and, even though it's not in breeding plumage with a long tail, it's still rather special.

I am reliably informed that the reason that the Long-tailed Duck was chosen as the Society's emblem was because it would reproduce quite well on photocopied newsletters when, back in the day, everything was still done in black and white.

Well, judging by these colours, this bird will still look good on those old faded sepia-toned newsletters from the 1970's!