Red-crested Pochard Netta rufina 赤嘴潛鴨
Category I. Accidental.
IDENTIFICATION
50-54 cm. Large with a rounded head and broad white wing bar in flight covering most of primaries and secondaries. Adult male in breeding plumage has orange head and pinkish-red bill with pale tip, black chest, belly and undertail coverts, very pale flanks and mid-brown upperparts.
Mar. 2012, Martin Hale.
Adult female has mid-brown crown and hind neck contrasting with pale face and throat, mid-brown upperparts contrasting with paler brown underparts, dark grey bill with pale tip. Adult male eclipse is similar to female but told by pinkish-red bill.
VOCALISATIONS
The male has a distinctive downslurred nasal call.
The female has a low-pitched call resembling a distant or stifled dog’s bark.
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
The sole record occurred in a brackish pond and briefly on a freshwater pond at Mai Po NR.
OCCURRENCE
The single record of a bird considered to have arrived naturally is of a female at Mai Po NR on 9-10 March 2012 (Klick 2014, which erroneously attributes the record to 2013).
Red-crested Pochard had been recorded twice previously, also at Mai Po. The first was an immature male on 11 July 1999 (Yu 2004). Given the date, it was considered the possibility of its being ex-captive was high, and it was added to Category III of the HK List. The second record was of a male on 15 June 2008, but this bird had extensive damage to the tertials and tail feathers suggesting it was of captive origin.
BEHAVIOUR, FORAGING & DIET
No observations.
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Monotypic. Core breeding range extends from Black Sea east through much of Kazakhstan to western Mongolia and adjacent parts of Russia, and south to northern Iran; scattered breeding populations in Europe. Winters in Spain and North Africa, around the eastern Mediterranean, Pakistan and India. In China breeds in northern Xinjiang, the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau and western Inner Mongolia; winters in southern Tibet, high altitude lakes of southwest China and less commonly in north and east China including the Yangtze floodplain, and has also been recorded in Guangxi, Fujian and Taiwan (Liu and Chen 2020).
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Least Concern. Population trend unknown.
Klick, B. (2014). Red-crested Pochard Netta rufina at Mai Po Nature Reserve. The first Hong Kong record accepted as Category I. Hong Kong Bird Report 2012: 216-219.
Salvador, A., J. A. Amat, and I. K. Özgencil (2022). Red-crested Pochard (Netta rufina), version 2.0. In Birds of the World (S. M. Billerman, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.recpoc.02
Liu, Y. and Y. H. Chen (eds) (2020). The CNG Field Guide to the Birds of China (in Chinese). Hunan Science and Technology Publication House, Changsha.
Yu, Y. T. (2004). Red-crested Pochard at Mai Po. Hong Kong Bird Report 1999-2000: 201-202.
