Damp Wednesday puzzle

?Canada goose, Platt Fields

After another windy night we had a day of leaden skies and incessant rain. The spadgers and starlings came out of cover en masse to make yet more inroads on the feeder. I'll need to get another few bags of sunflower seeds and some suet.

I had to go and get my booster jab in Urmston so I had a walk down past Humphrey Park allotments, my thinking being that if I reacted badly to the jab I'd at least have had a little bit of exercise. A gang of magpies bounced about in the trees by the allotments, excitedly setting about establishing the pecking order for the Winter.

The weather got appreciably worse while I was inside being poked with a needle but I didn't want to go straight back home awhile. I got the first bus that came along, which happened to be going to the Trafford Centre and when I got there I got the first bus out, which happened to be the 150 to Gorton.

As the bus approached Fallowfield the rain eased a bit down to merely steady so I thought I'd have a walk across Platt Fields to get a bit of exercise in. 

Common gulls and black-headed gull, Platt Fields

There were over a hundred black-headed gulls on the lake. A dozen adult herring gulls wheeled about, there were a couple more on the lake together with half a dozen first-Winter birds. There was also a dozen common gulls, most with heavy streaking on their heads, one in the distance almost having a full dark grey hood.

First-Winter herring gulls, Platt Fields

There were a few mallards and tufted ducks bobbing around with the Canada geese. I made sure to check all the gulls and ducks out, who knows what might have been blown in by the storm. And there's always the possibility that last Winter's ring-necked duck might make a repeat visit. Or if not that then perhaps a red-breasted merganser. The only merganser was a redhead goosander hunting by the far bank.

Goosander, Platt Fields

There was just the one great crested grebe on the lake, spending its time lurking by the path.

Great crested grebe, Platt Fields

One of the Canada geese made me do a double-take. It was definitely something different, but what?

?Canada goose, Platt Fields

?Canada goose, Platt Fields

?Canada goose (top) Platt Fields

Definitely not a Todd's Canada as I first thought when I saw it, the neck was stocky rather than thin (when I made my first attempt at an ID I remembered there was something about the neck of a Todd's but I remembered it dead wrong). The more I look at my photos and the more I read round the more baffled I am by it.

• Body about the same size as the other Canada geese but neck very short
• More evenly brown upperparts
• No pale back collar between black neck and brown bank
• Reduced white cheek patch black of neck nearly meeting black of chin
• Round head, large bill

Frankly, I don't even know this isn't a cackling goose rather than a Canada goose, some variation of feral Canada or a hybrid of some sort. One of "them" birds.

The long-tailed tits, ring-necked parakeets and redwings in the trees on Wilmslow Road were considerably easier to identify.