Parked up at Beckley today to check out the geese on Ashgrave. Unfortunately no Bean Geese or Pink-foots yet but there is a cold spell with north easterlies on the way so could well shake things up. I counted 54 White-fronted Geese and there were also 41 Barnacle Goose and some more hybrids. Ebird list HERE.
I popped down to check out the passerine feeding area in the hope of a Little Bunting getting amongst the flock but too many people walking through today so I had a quick look at Big Otmoor and finally saw the Grey Plover (Otmoor tick- now 131) which has been around for weeks (just proves what else could be lurking out here amongst the 60,000 birds- there must be a rarity hiding somewhere?)
Grey Plover (aboves)
Barnacle and White-fronted Geese on Ashgrave
A couple more hybrid geese (above and below) - will try and put some names to these when back at the office . Updated 040121- not sure what these are but certainly seems to be Greylag hybrids- potentially Greylag with Ross's or Barnacle? In the picture below it looks a little bit like a Lesser White-front with the small bill and yellow eye ring.
I think this is one of the Barnacle x Greylag Geese hybrids. Will need to do some reading but I think there are Greylag x Canada, Barnacle x Greylag, Barnacle x Canada and Canada x Snow Goose amongst these flocks of geese plus what might be second generation hybrids such as the birds in the two photos above showing some more subtle hybrids.
A beautiful day over the floods and reedbeds
Difficult to get a photo that shows the extent of flood and wetland at the moment at Otmoor but it's enormous- like the English Hortobagy
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