A calm, sunny visit to Henley Road GPs near Reading (but crucially, just in Oxfordshire) produced a nice Smew this morning. The first bird in my first scan was a male Wigeon, far right in the picture below. The second, a redhead Smew, second from right. A pleasantly quick result:
After a few moments, the Smew pulled out of the water and perched for a while…
… before continuing fishing under the overhanging branches:
Aging redhead Smew appears to be a tricky affair, as adult females and juvenile birds are very similar. Collins mentions that juveniles have a greyer, less white belly and that the loral area remains brown in their first autumn and “sometimes for longer”. This bird was too distant for me to to be certain of either of those features, so remains an ageless redhead (!).
The bird was here, at 10am today: