Yesterday morning saw staff and volunteers up nice and early to undertake the first Wetland Bird Survey (WeBS) of the year, a bright, sunny (if a little cold!) morning made for almost perfect counting conditions....
The morning starts with counting the geese as they leave the reserve, yesterdays total reaching 15,400 pink-footed geese. In typical fashion, the majority of geese headed off in the same direction...Kath and Tom taking up the challenge of counting almost 14,000 of them from their count point, whilst myself and Lesley at the south end of the reserve could only contribute 60 geese to the total!
Other goose numbers recorded were 56 barnacle geese, 28 greylags, around 5 bean geese and a very impressive count of 202 white-fronted geese (distant views, but most likely European white-fronts), which is the highest ever count for the reserve!
Other numbers of note included 1870 wigeon, 796 lapwing, 22 pochard, 787 teal, 10 pintail, 8 red-breasted merganser, 42 goldeneye, 500 golden plover, 2 water rail, 33 dunlin, 25 snipe, 3 redshank and 1 long-tailed duck! All in all a very nice morning spent out and about on the reserve.
This morning has thrown in some welcome additions to the year list in the form of a female smew at Fen hide and 4 bullfinches from bay hide. With bean goose added to the list yesterday, the grand total now stands at 78.
View of the whooper swans from fen hide this morning
Female smew can just be seen behind the right hand wigeon in flight!
Not quite on the reserve (so can’t be counted on the year list unfortunately) was a Bewick’s swan, seen in the fields down at Rattray amongst a group of whooper swans. We’ll be keeping a close eye out to see if it moves onto the reserve though...