Natural Selection

Eurasian White-fronted Goose by Paul Slade

Easterly winds just prior to Christmas brought an influx of scarce geese to Britain, including this neck of the woods. Both subspecies of Greater-Whitefronted Goose and Tundra Bean Geese were appearing all over the country, and often tagging along with Pinkfeet and even Greylag flocks. So naturally I wanted to see some, particularly the Whitefronts.

A fairly local birder described going to see the first flock of Greylags they could think of, and lo and behold there were a couple of Whitefronts tagging along. Job done. That’s birding, sometimes it really can be that easy.

But it just wasn’t being for me. My most local flock were in situ when I couldn’t stop, then when I could they’d been displaced by a woman walking through the filed with her dogs (twice…). A week ago I did finally connect with them, perhaps 1500 birds in total, and nothing.

Larger numbers were gathering not too far away at another of my haunts on days I was working. I got out at first light and some hundreds of Greylags and thousands of Pinkfeet on the wing. It was uplifting and spectacular, but when they settled there were no waifs to see (unless you count two Canada x Greylag hybrids. Others had more luck with the same flocks later in the day whilst I was working.

Slightly blurred shot of very dodgy geese

Today in my lunch break I returned to this broad area to do a Wintering Bird Survey. A scan through the 100 or so Pinkfeet in view on the opposite river bank produced nothing. But then a few more birds appeared from out of view and they included at least a couple of Eurasian Whitefronts. The shot gives a fare idea of how poor the views of the second bird in particular were.

So a nice start to the New Year, even if fashionably late to the party.