Pink foot

I haven't visited Grummit's Scrape, a small site close to the village of Baston just over the border in Lincolnshire, but still in the PBC recording area, for a long time, but yesterday I made amends.

On arrival, I noted that the sun was shining right in my face, not ideal for seeing anything much, but I persevered. There wasn't an awful lot present, a few Coot having a tussle, some Mallard, Mute Swans and a couple of dozen Wigeon were all seen and duly noted. The most numerous bird present were the geese, Greylags, with a farmyard goose moulting from white to grey and a rather strange looking Canada Goose. Whilst scanning the flock a couple of smaller looking geese appeared from behind a bank and revealed themselves to be Pink-footed Geese, not a major rarity, but nice to see in a land-locked area like ours. After a while a third appeared, very nice.

Below are a couple of shots, digiscoped and hand-held with the bridge camera, but as I have already said, the light was not ideal. (What is the saying about a bad workman blaming his tools?!)

Digiscoped effort

Above and below the bridge camera efforts. The picture above shows one of the geese with a potato stuck on its's bill.

In the Pink

Returning to Eye Green LNR when the sun was out seemed to be a good idea. The Pink-footed Goose was still present amongst the Greylags and the sun coupled with the proximity of the bird lent itself to getting these `better` shots.

Although I leave the judgement to you, dear reader.

Pink-footed Goose

This Pink-footed Goose was in amongst a gaggle of Greylag Geese today at Eye Green LNR (the scene of the Scaup sighting earlier in the week). He was on his own, although there was another present yesterday when the two were again found by Josh Jones.

This bird does not represent a new year `tick` for me, but was showing remarkably close at times and so provided me with some good views. It`s just a shame that the sun refused to come out whilst I was on site which has led to these dull shots. For some better photos of this lovely little goose,click HERE.

Wild goose chase

At the weekend I spent an extremely enjoyable day with my parents and my better half, Lisa at Holkham NNR in North Norfolk. We went to see the spectacle that is thousands of Pink-footed Geese feeding on the saltmarsh and surrounding fields.

This goose comes to Britain in the winter to escape the cold of Iceland and Greenland. There are over 240,000 birds that make this trip each year and numbers are on the increase thanks to a number of factors, including larger fields which makes finding food easier and better protection given at the winter roosts. They feed on vegetable matter including grain, winter cereals, potatoes and grass and although they do graze farmland they seldom do any economic damage.

A truly magical spectacle, especially when thousands of these geese fly directly overhead, with the noise being quite unbelievable!

All digiscoped using Lumix FS15 and Kowa TSN-883 x30