In Search of an Anser

Two days ago I finished work and was heading to the shop for food. The nearest shop is situated a little over eight miles away, hence I was driving rather than walking. I spied three geese just ahead of me, grazing the sheep-cropped grass that runs between the road and the sea. Two were clearly quite small, I figured they were Pink-feet and slowed down for a better look. By sheer misfortune, my big camera and my binoculars, which ordinarily live in the car, were instead back indoors. Having ascertained that the small geese were in fact Pink-feet, I glanced at the larger goose and noted with a shock that it wasn't the expected Greylag at all. Skye is distinctly lacking in goose diversity. We have resident Greylags bolstered by overwintering birds from further north, we have wintering Barnacle Geese and we have Pink-feet, mainly as passage migrants but with the odd two or three loitering all winter long. Any other species at all is noteworthy, yep even Canadas. 

The larger goose appeared to be an immature White-fronted Goose. Skye traditionally held wintering Greenland White-fronts at a site on the north coast, but these have declined to the point of extinction and haven't been reported for a while now. Russian White-fronts have had a huge British presence this winter with small groups and singletons turning up all over the place. As such, I assumed this bird would be a Russian White-front, but I needed evidence to back up any such claim. 

By this time I was stationary in the middle of a single track road and the geese were by now fully alert and looking ready to fly off at any second. I quickly grabbed my phone, managed four images and jumped as an unseen car behind me beeped impatiently, scattering the geese into flight and across the loch. Bugger! This is the 'best' of my four images

And the cropped, but otherwise unaltered, version below

It's not going to win any awards, I know this. Nevertheless, I put the news out on the local birding WhatsApp group and added the uncropped image saying "White-fronted Goose, Greshornish" and giving the direction of flight. The local bird recorder asked me if I "was able to sort out if Greenland or Russian" and, once back from the shop, I cropped the image, figured the bill looked pinkish, especially compared to the yellowish legs, and claimed Russian. By now it had grown dark and that was the end of that. 

That evening local birder Neil asked me to ping him my four pics, he had the following day off work and wanted to relocate the goose and get some proper images of it. We theorised as to the most likely places to check and agreed better images would be required seeing as Russian White-front is a description species here. I wished Neil luck and that was that.

The next day I was busy painting rooms when Neil messaged to say that he'd found the goose, gotten decent pics and it was a Greenland White-front. Sweet, not the expected outcome but great news all the same. He told me where it was and I had a quick look for it after work, but could only see Greylags and a lone Pink-foot (I later learned that I needed to be viewing from a different vantage point). Back indoors again, I checked Neil's pics and realised that something didn't look right. The whole posture seemed weird, it just didn't look very much like a White-front. Neil had taken over a hundred pics of the goose and he forwarded a few more to me, saying that he wasn't convinced it even was a White-front at all. He'd been going back and forth all evening long and had succeeded in thoroughly confusing himself. We both suspected the bird was a Taiga Bean Goose, though I'd never seen one with an extensively pale bill. I blew the dust and cobwebs off of my bird guide, so old that Bean Goose was still known as a single species, threw it back into its corner and then started some internet trawling regards the finer points of Taiga vs Tundra Bean Goose identity. Here's one of Neil's images that he forwarded me from that morning, taken in bright sunlight

In Neil's pic the bill is clearly seen to be yellowish, hence his provisional identification of Greenland White-front (Russian White-fronts have pink bills, though a small percentage of both races may exhibit the 'wrong' coloured bill). But in none of his images did it look particularly like a White-front, of any race. This next image was the absolute clincher though, check the posture, the length of the wedge-like bill and just look at the obvious white edges to the folded flight feathers

In fairness, these bold white feather margins are hugely evident in my cropped image too, I just didn't realise the significance at the time. Too bloody busy writing up the rockpooling blogpost instead of grilling the goose images that I'd taken... 

Decision made, we notified the bird recorder that the bird was a Taiga Bean Goose and awaited his response. Happily he agreed, put word out on the Skye Birds website, and commented that he would be looking for it himself in the morning.

Morning duly came, I was as per usual painting walls and ceilings when I received the message that Skye Birds Bob had connected with the goose and that it was a first for Skye! My second first for Skye, though in all fairness I can hardly take the glory for this one. Neil and I will submit a joint description for the goose, seeing as my images wouldn't get any further than "grey goose sp...probably" 

Suddenly I had finished painting the room and it was still light outside. The goose had been seen about three miles away this morning, I fancied my chances. Ensuring that I had both binoculars and big camera with me, I headed off towards the viewpoint in question. Half a mile before the turn-off I spied a flock of maybe 50 geese in a field. I slammed into a layby, had a quick scan and found the Taiga Bean Goose with its two Pink-feet pals, sweet!!! I spun the car, parked up in a more conveniently situated gateway and grabbed the camera. 53 images later and I was very happy to have my own images suitable to use in our description submission. And better images than my original four taken two days ago!

Oh dear, I think I've been seen...

Phew it's alright, flush safely averted

And some cropped images to follow

Note the very obvious white margins to the wing feathers which WFG lacks

Note also the horizontal carriage

Walking like a fat barnyard duck!

Long, wedge-shaped bill is apparent here

Note the background soil is not a Mole....tee hee! 

Creeping!

Such a distinctive goose!

This Pink-foot stood to attention the entire time I was there. I don't think it trusted me.

So there you have it, a mere two days after first sighting this bird, I have finally seen it properly and its true identity has (hopefully!) been revealed. Taiga Bean Goose has never before been recorded from Skye. Tundra Bean Goose has a couple of historical records. Oddly enough, there was a report of two 'Bean Geese' from the top end of Skye a couple of months back, maybe the report wasn't as mistaken as we all assumed (a few of us checked, we found two Pink-feet with the Greylags but no Beans).

Neil asked me a pertinent question this afternoon, 'I wonder how long it's been here?' My reply of months caused a laugh, but in reality who knows. I'll certainly be paying closer attention to the Greylag flocks from now on!