Greenshank & Geese

Even more extensive flooding today...

On here there were 40 Mallard and half a dozen Wigeon and Teal. Over on Langlands it looked very quiet but as I approached one area of floods I flushed a Greenshank from the edge of the water. This species is a rare spring visitor to the parish but this is the first winter record. Only small numbers of Greenshank overwinter in Britain, and most of these are concentrated on the south and west coasts so this was an excellent sighting. I didn’t manage a picture of the bird but this is where it was!

I could hear good numbers of Greylags here, around 300 birds were in the fields on the far side of How Beck but a nice skein came flying over. I picked out some higher pitched voices amongst the deeper calls of the Greylags and on the edge of the skein were six Pinkfeet. They broke off from the main flock and I lost sight of them over the far fields. I didn’t manage a picture of them either but these are some of the Greylags they were with!

The walk was rounded off with a nice flock of Fieldfares dropping in to the hawthorn and crab apple trees on the farm.