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.

Next Week's News!

Next week Another Bird Blog is taking part in a “Blog Tour” to celebrate the launch of the brand new bird field guide the Crossley ID Guide: Britain & Ireland. After a brief foray in October I’ll be looking next week in more detail at birds of North West England, but the blog tour is something a bit different. 

The publisher Princeton University Press, has teamed up with a group of bloggers to help promote the book’s launch. What happens is that a different wildlife blogger posts a bird or birding related post every day between next Monday 04 November, through to Friday 15 November, each linking to the previous and the next entry on the tour, and using plates from the Crossley ID Guide to help illustrate the post. In essence this helps readers to find lots of great wildlife related content on a variety of different blogs and birding websites across the Internet as well as spreading the word about the new book. 

You will find a full schedule for the Blog Tour over on the Princeton University Press website. You’ll see that Another Bird Blog is scheduled for the Thursday 7th November slot, so remember to mark your diary and look in then. 

The Crossley ID Guide: Britain and Ireland is the latest in a series of bird guides from birder and photographer Richard Crossley and shows all of the regularly seen birds in Britain and Ireland as you’re likely to encounter them in the field. It’s described by the publishers as “the most user-friendly guide to the birds of Britain and Ireland” and is aimed at beginner and intermediate level birders. The text is written by Dominic Couzens, one of Britain’s best known nature writers who contributes regularly to both the BBC Wildlife magazine and the Bird Watching monthly mag.

  The Crossley ID Guide:Britain and Ireland

And if you fancy winning a copy as part of the blog tour promotion the publisher has five signed copies to give away but you’ll have to wait for the tour to kick off on Monday to enter. Later the following week Another Bird Blog also has a spare copy to give away to a lucky blog reader.

See you soon.