Martin Mere

News of a cattle egret lured us to Martin Mere today, right into the clutches of the North West Bird Fair. The cattle egret failed to show again, and we also managed to miss a bittern and a green-winged teal, but even so it's hard to be disappointed by such an impressive spectacle. Birds included an adult European white-fronted goose with around 1000 pink-footed geese, 900 whooper swans, 500 black-tailed godwits (I don't recall seeing so many on the reserve before), 50+ ruff, 2 marsh harriers, barn owl, 100+ pintail and 1000's of teal and wigeon.

European white-fronted goose. Notice also the pink-footed goose with white around the base of the bill just to confuse matters!