Egyptian geese at Pennington Flash

From the sublime to the ridiculous, last week I'm watching Swainson's thrush and hoping for another vireo or a White's thrush on a Outer Hebridean island, this week I'm making the case for the Egyptian goose. Oh well, such is life in land locked Greater Manchester.

For the past five or six years a small number of Egyptian geese have spent the summer at Pennington Flash.  Occasionally they are accompanied by a juvenile or two. Usually they are gone by the end of September. 

Earlier this year just one bird spent September at the flash and I thought it was probably a sign that this small group was coming to an end. 

However, last Thursday a family party of two adults and two juveniles appeared, all unringed and all wary, at least so far! I have seen them once on the car park early morning, but they won't allow close approach and by mid morning they go elsewhere. Most of the time they are either at the boat club or on the flooded horse field between Mossley Hall farm and Slag lane. 

Obviously they've not flown here from Egypt, but it would be interesting to know where these birds have bred. Apparently there is currently no known breeding within Greater Manchester and the core breeding areas are East Anglia, South London and the East Midlands, the latter probably as close as 80 miles as the goose flies. However there may also be other much closer places where the species breeds, and perhaps there are sites within Greater Manchester which are not presently known. Whatever the answer, these particular birds are probably as good as it gets for a local tick!