- Dark ear covert patch contrasts with paler more streaky crown which is concolorous with the upperparts. In nominate the crown and ear-coverts are uniform and the crown darker than the upperparts.
- Grey flank panel reaching trailing edge of wing which merges with the darker breast patch. In nominate the breast patch is isolated by the white flanks.
- Smaller, more compact, shorter winged and overall darker than nominate.
I visited the site on 9th October and the bird was showing exceptionally well, on occasions, from the fishing platform in the north-west corner of the southern lake. The bird worked a circuit of the southern reservoir from the south-east corner to the north-west corner coming particularly close inshore when reaching the north-west corner.
I shot a lot of images of this bird but was a little disappointed with the results, primarily because I was shooting into the light but also because the bird had a very erratic, dipping, flight and I have not yet mastered the auto-focus of the E-M1X for in-flight shots. I therefore had a high number of reject images.
The first British Record of this subspecies was at Weston-super-mare from 3rd-11th October 1999 there have been six accepted records in Great Britain to the end of 2018. However, surely this species will become more regular as the field characters of the subspecies become more widely appreciated.
