02/02/2024 Martin Mere WWT, Lancashire

Red-breasted Goose: Happy New Year. Here we are are in 2022 and I ended the year with 25 new lifers, putting me on 450. One of my most successful years with too many highlights to name.

No New Years outing with any birding chums, so instead it was a New Years day trip to Martin Mere with the family. The hope was to see the long staying RBG which was taken up residence on the Mere and I wasn't disappointed. 

Plastic fantastic or the real deal.....?

I saw this same bird back on the 3rd of December, on the edge of a vast salt marsh with tens of hounds of pink-footed geese. Seemingly acting like a truly wild bird, albeit it not with its peered carrier species such as Brent geese or white-fronted geese. 

Now its settled at Martin Mere and is feeding right in the open and close to the viewing screens, foraging on the grassy bank. it still comes and goes with pink-footed geese but now its showing this well.

A lovely looking bird but surely not doing itself any favours regarding its provenance! I know fly who have ticked it and I know some folk who still need it but won't entertain going to see it as its now acting more like one of Martin Meres captive birds.  

After watching the bird I headed back over to the park and collected dawn and Autumn before having a fun and enjoyable walk around the duck pens. 

Brambling: We eventually checked out the other hides were we had two marsh harrier and a nice kingfisher from the Harrier Hide.

Autumn was getting restless so we move don to the Janet Keir Hide.

It was here we had two brambling that were visiting the bird feeders, another reason I chose a New Years walk at Martin Mere. These brambling have been around for a few weeks now and if you get lucky and time your visit right they can be pretty showy.

So another year over and on to the next, what will be the big bird of 2024?

03/12/2023 Southport, Merseyside

Red-breasted Goose: Every year migratory wintering geese make the 500-mile journey from Iceland to spend the next couple of months feeding on the arable fields around Southport and east Lancashire. Most of the pink-footed goose population will spend the majority of the winter down south. However, they’ll take a break in their long journey here in Lancashire so that they can refuel for a few weeks before they continue.

On occasion these large flocks of migratory pink-footed geese can pick up and pull in other rare geese species.

There are fewer than 40,000 red-breasted geese in the world and the species is listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list.

Red-breasted Geese are highly sought after in wildfowl collections and are now becoming more prolific in captivity. They have a beautiful and bold pattern of black, white and chestnut plumage and are the smallest of the northern geese.

There is ways discussions of a bird wild validity but this bird is being pulled in with a decent carrier species and associations well with pink-footed geese it looks good so far. 

Snow Bunting: I like Bank Marsh and envy the likes of Stuart Derbyshire (who found the RBG) and who has Banks Marsh as their local patch, not only do they have the chance to find rare geese like this RBG, but they get to see such great spectacle of tens of thousands of geese flocking over the marsh and forming large grazing carpets of geese. 

The long walk down from the car park was pretty productive as we had some large flocks of twine moving between the marsh and the arable fields before connecting with Beth RBG and watching it as it flew around with around five thousands pinkies. 

From here we walked back to the car and drove down to Southport Pier where a single female snow bunting had taken up residence. The Birx has been around for about a. week or so favouring the area of the beach infant of the KFC north of the Pier. 

Carl found the bird foraging within the strand line vegetation and in typical snow bunting fashion it wasn't particually shy of the camera, or dog walks and passersby. 

Although the mountains regions where they breed and migrate from have a resident population augmented by high altitude winter visitors, the snow bunting is better known to birdwatchers as a winter visitor to the chilly coasts. 

And with the low lying snow and frost dusted over the strand line and sandy-shingle beech the bird looked perfect in it setting, opposite KFC in the middle of Southport. 

A great winters morning birding with Kris and Carl and we were back home intimate for lunch, in the warm, here's to next time lads.