A  rare spectacled eider (Somateria fisheri) has been spotted on the Wadden island of Texel, far away from its usual wintering place in the Bering Sea where the species normally congregates among the ice floes.

“Someone must have cancelled its flight,” birdwatcher Elian Hijne, who was the first to spot the sea duck, told RTL Nieuws.

“It took a while to sink in,” she said. “It’s very special to see this species in the Netherlands. It just doesn’t belong here.”

Locals soon flocked to the site, Elian said, but their first inkling of just how rare the sighting was came when birdwatchers from France and England said they were planning a visit as well. “A birdwatcher who was on his way to Schiphol for a holiday turned back as soon as he heard,” she said.

It remains to be seen how long the lone male duck will hang around on Texel without a mate; it breeds on the coasts of Alaska and northeastern Siberia.

“It may have simply drifted off course,” Hijne said, while other theories include the diminishing ice around the pole which may give the ducks more space to roam.

There are some 360,000 spectacled eiders left in the world today and their number is going down. They are in the near-threatened category on the IUCN red list.