After Iron Man

I wasn't expecting much this morning with the annual Iron Man competition being on, meaning that all of the roads around the flash were closed 6am-10am and there was much noise and a large number of people. The announcer over the tannoy woke me up at 6am and I imagined that most birds would be gone by the time that I got there at 10:30am. 

I was pleasantly surprised therefore to find that it was actually most of the people that had gone and even better there were four common scoter in the middle of the flash. On the spit there were six common sandpipers and four common terns, and just off the car park a family party of 6 Egyptian geese, an adult and five juveniles.

I've spoken before about Egyptian geese at the flash. They appear every summer and then disappear a month or two later. I've no idea where they originate from, they certainly don't breed at the flash and the county recorder told me last autumn that there was no known breeding in Greater Manchester, so where does this family party come from? The East Midlands is about the closest breeding area that I know of, but why are Egyptian geese an annual feature here in the summer? Feral geese may not be everybody's cup of tea but their movements can be fascinating.