Thousand yard stare

Neill picked Bazzo and I up this morning and we nipped over to the Fylde for a spot of goose chasing. We arrived at Eagland Hill mid-morning to ‘scope a few thousand Pinks in the field there in the hope the Red Breasted Goose would pop out.
It didn’t, which in terms of “year-tickage” wasn’t great, but during the course of the day we did manage five Tundra Bean Geese and up to six Eurasian Whitefronts amongst the fairly distant Pinks.
A break from ‘scoping took us down to Knott End for the considerably easier female Black Redstart behind the Bourne Arms pub and a few Eider on the Wyre rivermouth.

Then we headed back to Eagland Hill, where if anything the geese were further away, but we ‘scoped ’em for a few hours all the same, more on a matter of principle than anything else.
I suppose the Red Breasted could have been lurking in the flock, but even allowing for its small size (little bigger than a Mallard) they usually stick out like a sore thumb in my limited experience of ’em.

Peregrine, Merlin and Tree Sparrow were distractions from the eye-wateringly long range hunt.
As we drove off the Fylde goose badlands we bumped into the blue morph Snow Goose near Nateby, where, following its time at Marshside before Christmas, it now hangs out with Greylags and was waddling about VERY close to the road this afternoon.
Disgraceful behaviour, but ain’t that just wildfowl???

Hmmmm….

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