Natural Selection

I don’t have much time to look for birds at the moment. I’ve been nipping to Singleton and Little Singleton and hoping for geese, and I’ve been quite lucky really. Today there were a couple of thousand or so Pinkfeet at the end of Occupation Lane, though they were very skittish due to disturbance from the air.

I basically got one chance to scan quickly through the flock as it was to turn out, as they went up again and headed east a considerable distance well out of range. Fortunately I was able to pick out a Greenland White-fronted Goose before the show ended. This was almost certainly the bird first seen at Singleton in early December, then by me at Larbreck on 19 December and here on 31 December. Nevertheless it’s the first Whitefront on the Fylde in 2023, it will be interesting to see if many others are picked up in the next few weeks as droves of Pinkfeet return from Norfolk.

There were a few gulls by the river in front of me and I had a quick scan for any ringed birds. One challenge I have set myself is to find and read a Common Gull Darvic having seen several over the years but never clinched one. There were no ringed birds today, but there was a nice adult Mediterranean Gull.