Goose for Xmas

Despite saying in my last post that I wasn't in the mood for twitching, I cracked today. The weather was good so I went East to go and top up my year-list. The target was near Norwich, the combined reserves of Strumpshaw Fen and Cantley and Buckenham Marshes. In reality they are really one area divided by artificial boundaries into one marshy, reedy area.
My target was a species only recently granted that distinction. Up to a couple of years ago bean goose was one full species with two sub-species - tundra and taiga. For listing purposes you therefore only needed one of them. The powers that be then decided that they were different enough to warrant upgrading to full species level. That of course means that there are two ticks available each year. I already have tundra, from Dungeness early in the year. Taiga I do not have - yet. The combined Cantley/ Buckenham area is a known wintering ground for them and one where I have seen them many times before. I timed my journey well and got there as dawn was starting to break. The two reserves are a large wet, swampy area with the river running at the far side. It is a magnet for geese in the Winter and you could see and hear skeins flying around.

Most of the birds were of the common or garden Canada goose variety. Mixed in amongst them were greylags and the less common barnacle goose, most of which are feral down south but still tickable!! As you can guess, they were all in the middle of the marsh and a long way off.!!!!

Closer to the path were large numbers of ducks including wigeon, feeding in large herds on the lush grass.

It took a lot of looking but eventually I managed to get onto the taiga bean geese, mixed in amongst the canada geese. Not easy to see and a long way off though.

Massively cropped in, the taigas' are the two plainer geese in the middle. They have a characteristic dark head with a long bill tipped with orange. After a bit, and for no particular reason, the three of them took off and moved out of sight down the marshes.
Their legs, if you can see them, are orange, not pink. This helps separate them from the closely related pink-footed goose. When I moved later on to Cantley there were hundreds of these in the fields, feeding and occasionally taking off in giant flocks wheeling around before coming back down to feed.

FinalIy I dropped in to Strumpshaw Fen, only a mile or so down the road. It was very quiet on the wildlife front, not helped by it being work-party day and a number of bonfires covered the fen in smoke. The only highlight was a lone bittern from one of the hides. It only showed once then disappeared into the reeds.

A nice day out, good weather and spectacular sights. Will that be the last tick of the year? Xmas always seems to drop in a surprise rarity - blue rockthrush, Brunnichs guillemot, Blyths pipit - so hopefully not!