Friday Flight

I was on my way north but decided to stop off at Lane Ends when I saw lots of Pink-footed Geese coming off the marsh from their night time roost and dropping for breakfast in the nearest field. It was the closest field but also a large one, the wary geese sticking close to the furthest fence from the road where noone would trouble them. The geese didn’t so much as drop in but glide down, treating me to a superb display of synchronised landing into the wind, wings bowed at the appropriate angle with tail and feet applying the brakes for a perfect landing. 

 Pink-footed Geese

 Pink-footed Goose

Pink-footed Goose

Geese were constantly arriving and leaving in small groups, staying to feed or heading off inland for pastures new. In all I estimated 1800 birds on the field before the first person on foot along the lane sent the geese off in noisy flight. Click on xeno-canto to hear the geese panicking off.

At Conder Green two Spotted Redshank still explored the channel, while on the pool Little Grebe numbers have fallen to just 3, Wigeon increased to 12 and Tufted Duck to 3. I struggled to find much else and even the dependable Teal numbers have declined to 120+.

It was an icy cold morning but at Glasson I found an angler, head in his chest and fast asleep in a chair at the side of the dock. Maybe he’d been there all night as anglers often do, but there didn’t seem to be a layer of frost so I left him in his slumber and counted the wildfowl, many of them sleeping head down too - 80+ Tufted Duck, 42 Coot, 1 Scaup and 1 Pochard.

 Scaup - Courtesy of The Crossley ID Guide: Britain & Ireland

I hope a blog reader was a winner of the recent Princeton University Press competition for a signed copy of The Crossley ID Guide: Britain & Ireland. See who won here at Another Bird Blog .

I decided to head back to Lane Ends to check out the stubble field - still consistent with 90+ Black-tailed Godwit, 220 Lapwing, 200 Jackdaws, 40 Carrion Crow, 25 Redshank, 3 Snipe, 8 Curlew, 2 Golden Plover, 70+ Skylark and then 2 Reed Buntings in the spent maize.

Carrion Crows chased a Buzzard out of the plantation at Pilling Water and as I walked back to Fluke the crows had found a Peregrine to chase as well; they don’t miss much those crows.

Buzzard

At Fluke itself, a Jay in the trees and several Tree Sparrows along the hedgerow.

There's more soon from Another Bird Blog, stay tuned. In the meantime I'm linking to Camera Critters and I'd Rather Be Birding.