Back to a more native bird--at least during winter. The colours of this bird really stuck out across the pond the other day at St James's Park. I didn't get a great photo at that time but was lucky enough to see them much closer up when I went back a couple of days ago. I don't know much about the common shelduck in terms of my own observations, but the one thing I did notice was how the beaks appeared to be different on a couple of the birds I saw. One had that nob at the base of its beak toward the forehead, and the other one didn't have the nob. I had to do a little bit of research to find out why that was the case. I hypothesised that perhaps that was the difference between males and females, and it turns out I was correct! See if you can spot the difference in these two photos for yourself.
You might want to click on them to enlarge them, especially since the second photo has more shadow on the beak and might be harder to see in a smaller frame. However, I am happy to have got the backside of it since it shows off the pretty greens in addition to the rusts.
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