To be honest I'm not good on goose id, but there are 22 Lesser White-fronted Geese at Wild Ken Hill. These are a new species to me and very rare. They come from the reintroduced Swedish population and have come across to the UK for the winter. Interestingly, in the past, the population has been trained by implanting on Barnacle Geese to fly west to 'safe' grounds, rather than fly east to areas where they are shot. They have less dramatic barring on their bellies than the Greater White-fronted Geese from Russia, that we saw earlier in the week, and the white around their bills extends high up onto the top of their head. ...so what were our chances of seeing them?
Well we walked for about 400 yards and there they were - 22 of them as reported and close enough to photograph to confirm their id.
 |
| Lesser White-fronted and below |
 |
| Greater White-fronted Geese from earlier in the week. |
No comments:
Post a Comment