An early start this morning for our first autumn WeBS count, and our first big goose count of the season. Usually the geese tend to lift off in a steady stream around dawn and fly directly off the reserve in fairly predictable direction to their feeding grounds. We sit in a circle around the reserve, pick a section of sky and count all the geese as they leave in the morning. A field count to check the numbers that stay on the reserve comes next and then we add the two figures together to give us our roosting total. It's a bit harder than it sounds, but the plan normally works pretty well.
This morning however, the geese had no intention of simply flying off the reserve so we could count them past. They took off, landed again, headed south then swung north, disappeared behind the dunes, and then waited until we were absolutely sure no more birds were going to leave and were heading to our field count positions before making a break for it and dashing inland. Adding up all the totals over breakfast took a while, but we've calculated we have just over 10,000 geese roosting on the reserve itself with perhaps another 2,000 a little further south around Rattray Head. These are pretty good numbers given how recently the geese came back and it all looks like it could be a good season for Goosewatch when it starts in October.
There wer also two major birding highlights this morning aside from the geese, Vicky and Ed got to see a Common Crane fly barely five feet overhead as they sat in Tower Pool Hide, and myself and Emma had a juvenile Pallid/Montagu's Harrier flying just in front of the car at the very south end of the loch. Unfortunately the light and the 400 geese we were trying to count at the time meant we couldn't get enough detail to definitively ID the bird, but this would be the first record of Pallid and only the second record of Montagu's Harrier on the reserve so either way was an incredibly exciting find. Another two hours at the loch and a trip to Rattray this afternoon,( although picking up Whinchat and Lesser Whitethroat) didn't bring another sighting, but if you see a bird of prey with a white rump on the reserve in the next few days, it's worth giving it a very careful second look.