Appearances can be deceiving, first impressions can be misleading. I arrived
at the flash this morning to find the place shrouded in mist and drizzle, in
fact just the kind of conditions that at this time of year can often produce
something good. I was full of anticipation when I arrived at Horrock's hide,
but what I wasn't expecting was a barnacle goose.
At first it was flying around calling as if looking for a place to land.
Eventually it seemed decide that the Spit was the best place and it landed in
the water near the end, about 150m away from me. While it had been flying I
noticed that it had a yellow ring on its left leg and this immediately piqued
my interest because I knew that some birds from Svalbard have yellow rings on
their left legs. However I needed to read the code on the ring and this proved
easier said than done. The bird was very wary and though it was obviously
considering coming out of the water even the slightest noise or movement from
a nearby duck spooked it and it moved away. One time it partially came out but
not enough for me to read the ring and then all of the lapwings on the end
flew up and up went the goose with them, flying high calling, I watched it
disappear over the ruck and thought it was gone, but after about five minutes
I heard it again and there it was flying high over the flash. Now it flew
south and was lost behind the trees, but again it returned as the drizzle
continued to fall. Eventually it landed back in the same location just off the
spit, and though it walked out of the water a little, I still couldn't see
below its knees. Again it was constantly looking around nervously and after a
while it flew again, but this time just a short distance and joined up with
about 20 Canada's in the middle of the flash, yet even now it didn't seem
settled, keeping a respectable distance from its larger cousins. Surely this
was a wild bird? It was so wary.
My only concern was that it's a bit early for Svalbard birds, which don't
usually arrive in Scotland until October, and also there is a feral population
of Barnacles in the Knowsley / St Helens area which now numbers over 200
birds. On the other hand large numbers of pink-footed geese have been passing
over during the past couple of days, with 10,000 currently on the Ribble
marshes and many more flying east over North West England heading for Norfolk,
so who knows, perhaps this bird had been travelling with them and got
disorientated in the mist and drizzle and ended up on the flash. I still
hadn't read the ring.....
However, the Canada goose flock made it's way towards the car park with their
smaller companion straggling along behind them and eventually they made it to
the shore and walked out. This is not a good place to be for a bird that
want's to be considered wild, and now it didn't seem so wary, allowing me to
approach with 10m and sit down on a bench to take a few photos. The code on
the ring read X61 and a quick bit of research revealed that it was part of a
project to ring naturalised geese in the UK with the aim of learning about
their movements. Kane Brides has confirmed that the bird was ringed at
Knowsley in July this year and also commented that "The flock seems to have
dispersed and moved around in the past few days, with Knowsley ringed birds
having been found in Oxfordshire and Surrey in the past few days!"
So in the end it wasn't from Svalbard but it still made for an entertaining
morning !
Despite there being such a large feral breeding population as close as
Knowsley, barnacle goose is still a very scarce bird at the Flash and perhaps
surprisingly this was only my third ever record in around 40 years, though it
is possible that in the first 20 or so of those years I didn't record them,
perhaps dismissing them as just feral geese. Svalbard barnacles have been
recorded at the Flash, previously, the last was on 10th October 2013 when one
of a flock of 10 barnacles on the spit had an orange darvic ring, FIF which
was confirmed as having been ringed in Svalbard.
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