Drake pintail: The rare duck that is dressed to thrill again

The pintail also has a remarkably long neck which enables both sexes to reach down well below the water surface to feed.

As a result it has no need to dive but instead repeatedly upends, lowering its long neck until it tips over, bottom up and head down, maintaining this position with frantic paddling.

No other dabbling duck upends as much and the pigtail is able to trawl the mud on the lake or estuary bed for small invertebrates.

The pintail is a candidate for the world's commonest duck with an estimated six million of them in North America alone.

In contrast it is our rarest resident dabbler with only just over 30 pairs a year in Britain and Ireland.

Why this is so is not fully understood but could be because of the habitats pintails require to nest in, shallow pools on grassland, marshes and meadows, all of which are vulnerable both to droughts and late spring flooding.

In autumn between 20,000 and 30,000 pintails arrive here from Siberia, Fennoscandia, the Baltic States and Iceland and more than half of them gather on estuaries in the north west such as the Solway, Ribble and Morecambe Bay with the Dee estuary attracting the largest numbers.

But a few always linger on inland sites across the region giving birders the chance to admire them at close quarters.

Birders headed for the village of Shelf near Bradford after a mystery bird visiting a garden was identified as a as a first-winer Scarlet tanager, a rare vagrant from North America.

Other sightings across the region included ten cattle egrets still on the Fairburn Ings reserve, also great egrets seen there and at St Aidans,

Shore larks were seen on the east coast at Filey and two at Beacon Ponds, also snow buntings - one or two snow buntings were also seen inland including one at Bell House Moor, Hebden Bridge.

Hawfinches are still arriving with six seen around the churchyard at Gilling East, North Yorkshire,