Saturday 9 October 2010

Barnes White fronted wonders

Trip out with both the kids which usually makes birding hard work. The trip out today paid off though - just after 10am saw a small party (6) of grey geese circle the site and first assumption was that they were Greylag, but something in the back of my brain made me do a quick check with bins: White fronted Geese!! Patch tick!! They circled the site twice fairly low then I lost them behind the trees by WWT Hide - they were later seen heading downriver and over Beddington. Couldn't get a firm bill colour so certainly not conclusive, but these birds had big long bills and heavy barring on at least three of them - do this and the date point to Greenland White fronts?

A little earlier I'd had at least 2 (probably 4) Mipits over (2 calling, the other 2 pipit spp that were probably Meadow). Elsewhere numbers of Shoveler were up from last week (to around 45), slight increase in Teal (50-60), although Wigeon still only in high single figures.

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