Leucistic scoter? Rickelsbüller Koog (Germany) (1 Viewer)

[yarrellii]

Where: Rickelsbüller Koog. Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
When: today, 28.07.2023

Today I saw what appears to be a common scoter (Melanitta nigra) in Rickelsbüller Koog. I'm not very familiar with this species, and there's something that has caught my eye.
The bird seems to have the most notable features of the species:

Pitch black overall plummage.
Yellow upper part of the beak. The beak itself has a peculiar form.
Tail pointing upwards.

However, this scoter has a distinct white patch on the breast, it was visible "live" and can be seen on the images I've recorded. I was using my scope at its maximum power (50x-60x) and my smartphone at 2x, so the bird was quite far away, so excuse the extremely poor quality of the images (these are frames of a video I've shot).



My question is whether this could be a leucistic bird or the white patch could be due to moulting somehow.

I've seen some pictures of velvet scoters (Melanitta fusca) displaying white marks, but the area around the eyes is usually quite telling (as is the more pronounced beak).
Thanks for any input.

 

[Andrew Whitehouse]

It's definitely a Common Scoter. An odd mark on it. It's small enough that it could perhaps be some sort of staining or bleaching rather than leucism - it's hard to tell for sure from the photos.

 

[yarrellii]

Thanks, Andrew. Very interesting remark. I was 99 % sure about the ID, but it was actually the first time I've seen one on the field. The white patch is most intriguing. Looking through the scope, it appeared as a feature of the plummage, but who knows. Thank you again.