Goosefest

I gave myself the day off work and headed down the road to check if the Taiga Bean Goose was still present. It was, still with its two Pink-feet friends and all three keeping their distance from the Greylag flock. I'm not sure why they don't mix with the Greylags, maybe it's not just me that views them as fake plastic dross? The distance and light conditions weren't especially conducive for taking piccies, so I headed off to see what else I could find. I quite fancied a trip to the Top End. 

You may recall I mentioned in the previous post that Skye used to have a flock of Greenland White-fronted Geese that wintered on the north coast marshes. The number of immature birds steadily fell and the 30+ strong flock slowly reduced to just two birds which were last seen two winters ago. There were none seen last winter and there haven't been any seen this winter. The local bird recorder gave a talk just two weeks ago where he lamented their loss as a Skye visitor. But that doesn't stop me having a look anyway. If it's not too windy or wet, I usually pull over for a scan whenever I'm passing. Any geese out on the marshes are typically a long way away and, no matter how interesting they initially appear, inevitably turn out to be Greylags. In fact Greylags and Hoodies are about the only things I ever see out there, other than a few Roe Deer. 

After about ten minutes I suddenly found myself looking at a group of six dark-looking geese and alarm bells started ringing. Could it be? Could it? I zoomed up from 20x to 30x magnification. Hmmm, the wind was shaking my scope a little but I was pretty sure these weren't Greylags. One finally turned and I saw a flash of pure white over a yellow bill - holy crap, Greenland White-fronts!! Very slowly the group moved through the vegetation and then they found what I assume is a deer trail through the marsh. This led them to slightly higher ground and I could clearly see the orange legs, time to try for some pics! 

40x mag on the scope and with the camera zoomed in too!

Did I mention they were quite a way away... The big camera picked them up, but zoomed in they are just blurry pixels. Digi-scoping was my best bet, terrible though the results were. 

Ultra-crop of the geese, probably the best I managed out of a lot of attempts

I suddenly realised there were more geese than the six I had initially counted, I'm really not sure where the rest came from. Presumably the group I first located had walked to another other group that I hadn't spotted yet. A quick count and I made it eleven birds. So much for Greenland White-front being extinct on Skye! Using Google Maps I tried my hardest to drop a pin fairly accurately over the exact spot the geese were frequenting (I'm not convinced I did a very good job of it). Then I took a scenery shot from my viewpoint and drew a circle around where the geese were and pinged it all off to the local birding WhatsApp group. 

Clearly there was 'a bit' of online excitement, the fact that it had been years since this many birds had been seen on Skye and the fact that there were immature birds present made Bob (the Skye bird recorder) think that these must be new birds from a different population. He's coming up to see them tomorrow, he lives a mere 45 miles away to the south... I bet he's cursing me for finding stuff so far away from where he lives, haha! The Taiga Bean Goose I found is 40 miles from his house and he journeyed up to see that just two days ago. He'll be asking me for petrol money next :) (Edit: Bob tried for the geese but, after two hours of scanning and searching, he quit empty-handed. Eeek! Happily he tried again on the 11th and found the flock, phew! )

Feeling very pleased with myself I realised that I had seen four species of goose so far today. Barnacle Geese would be easy at Kilmaluag or Staffin, I continued around the top of the Trotternish where, despite my best efforts, I failed to find the Barnacle Goose flock. Meh!

"So yeah, I've seen Taiga Bean, Pink-foot and Greylag Geese today..."

"and then a flock of Greenland White-fronted Geese..."

"but messed it up by failing to find the Barnacles - hey, quit laughing at me!"

Today has been a really good day, as Bob put it "You're on a roll!" To cap it all, a beautiful adult male Hen Harrier suddenly veered into view as I was driving southwards. No chance to pull over for a better look but ten minutes later, as I was parked up viewing a loch for ducks (or Barnacle Geese...) it flew almost straight over my head, continued south along the margins and was gone. But not before I blasted a barrage of pics at it! 

Gloriously in focus foreground vegetation......insert facepalm emoji

Clearly I need to go through my camera settings one more time, ideally before I leave the house again. There was one final surprise in store for me though. I wandered outside for something or another and noticed a moth sat on the wall beneath a security light. 

Pale Brindled Beauty, 10cm away and immobile. Perfect for someone with my photography skills...

Greenland White-fronted Goose is my 80th bird species on Skye this year (with Hen Harrier being the 81st). I've never tried for a Skye Big Bird Year before, and in all honesty I doubt I will try for one this year, but it will be interesting to see how many bird species I can muster during 2026. Neil assures me that Jay is a gimme at Kinloch (I've seen one within a few miles of Skye Bridge, but never on Skye itself yet) and Nuthatch is the other bird that may be colonising down on Sleat. I'm down that way this spring anyway, Sleat holds all of my Adder, Killarney Fern and Rannoch Brindled Beauty sites as well as the recently discovered Chequered Skipper colony. Fingers crossed for some white-wingers soon, so far this year Skye has completely blanked.