Saw this fellow at Cley , Norfolk yesterday. It eventually came towards the hide and the flow overhead. Someonec mentioned it might be an 'escapee' but who knows!!
[QUOTE=scottishdude]Saw this fellow at Cley , Norfolk yesterday. It eventually came towards the hide and the flow overhead. Someonec mentioned it might be an 'escapee' but who knows!![/QUOTE]
I am sure others will confirm this but my understanding is that all bar-heads are now treated with scepticism by BBRC. It is possible that in times past that odd birds may have arrived in the UK as genuine accidentals although migration routes are a long way east. I recently saw a paper that tried to make a case for bar-heads in Europe being genuine deflections from migration but it takes a wee but of imagination. Not saying that it doesn't happen but the birds would have to overshoot partially over the Pole according to the theory and I am not convinced by this idea. It has logic behind the idea but not much in the way of firm evidence. Sadly, we know that there are a lot of bar-heads in captivity and escapees must be correspondingly high.
OK fair comment, but it was a first for me ;-)