Accidental lifer

Pink-footed geese, barnacle goose and lesser white-fronted goose

It was another sunny morning but I wasn't sure where or whether to go out for a walk so I headed off for Marshside, it's a gentle toddle and there's usually something around.

I got off the 44 bus and walked down Marshside Road. The little paddock at the edge of Sutton's Marsh was heaving with house sparrows and starlings. The lack of house martins was the first of many indications of the passage of the seasons.

Starlings

Starling

The field across the road was bone dry. A small flock of curlews fed among the cattle. I looked in vain for any cattle egrets (in fact, I didn't see any egrets at all today, the first time that's happened here).

Junction Pool was dead dry, the mud baked hard and birdless.

Curlew

There were a few greylag geese on Sutton's Marsh and a big flock of Canada geese over by Sandgrounders Hide. The crowd scenes were provided by hundreds of pink-footed geese, with more flying in all the time.

Pink-footed geese

The lockdown restrictions meant I didn't go on any wild goose chases last Winter so the usual mixture of elation and frustration was a bit overwhelming at first. I scanned through the masses looking for anything different and experienced the usual initial touch of confusion with the bright russet youngsters and the variations in bill colour and pattern of the adults, all the way from all black to almost wholly pink. One individual, looking taller than the others in its group because it was on sentry go, made me look twice. Familiar territory.

I did notice a couple of barnacle geese. I took a few photos and while I was checking them on the back of the camera to see how they'd turned out I noticed an odd individual. At first I thought it was a white-fronted goose but it was far too small, barely the size of the pink-footed geese, and far too neat. The likelihood of a lesser white-fronted goose appearing on Marshside is vanishingly small so I'll forgive myself for not twigging it immediately. Try as I might I couldn't find the bird out on the field, either it had gone to sleep with its head tucked into its back feathers or it had disappeared into one of those dips and furrows that can hide a great white egret. A frustrating way of accidentally gaining an addition to the life list.

As always with wildfowl the possibility of its being an escaped bird has to be borne in mind, especially as a lesser white-front is more likely to be in the company of bean geese from the East than pink-feet from the West. (The Rare Bird Committee that keeps the records of national rarities works on the assumption that all rare wildfowl are escaped birds unless unequivocally proven otherwise). There's a reintroduction scheme using captive-bred birds in Holland, this bird could have been a youngster that tagged along with some of last Winter's pink-feet. All of which is speculation on my part. I noticed a little later that somebody else had already reported this bird on BirdGuides and their working assumption was that it was an escapee. I'm still having it on my life list though.

Pink-footed geese and barnacle geese

Pink-footed geese

Pink-footed geese, barnacle goose and lesser white-fronted goose

Pink-footed geese, barnacle goose and lesser white-fronted goose

Greylag geese and pink-footed geese

Wigeon

The first of the wigeon were back, all the drakes still in their ginger eclipse plumage. A great black-back was kept busy trying to eat one it had killed whilst fending off a couple of carrion crows who quite fancied the meal for themselves. There were a few teal and mallard and just a couple of shovelers, there wasn't a lot of water about and most of it was covered in Canada geese.

There were quite a few waders about by Sandgrounders, nearly all of them black-tailed godwits. A few lapwings sat with a group of black-headed gulls on the margins of the biggest flock of Canada geese. A couple of golden plover flew over towards Crossens Marsh. And a single ruff foraged on the mud in front of the hide. No little stints or exotic peeps for me today.

Amidst all these heralds of Autumn a few migrant hawkers patrolled the reeds and tall grasses, glinting blue in the sunlight.

Ruff

Black-tailed godwits

I walked over to Crossens Marsh, which was bone dry save for a bit of water in one of the sluices by the path and a couple of patches of damp mud on the inner marsh, one covered in lapwings and starlings and the other covered in black-headed gulls. I found this stretch of the walk pretty depressing to be honest, I've seen more birds on here in the past when it was thick fog.

A nice couple of hours' wander and a reminder that goose watching is almost as unpredictable and frustrating as gull watching.