What a day yesterday. Weather cold, clear, calm and even a bit of sun pm to warm us up.
We had a visit by Brian Minshull, Mike Thornton and Jessica Shaw from Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) who were keen to see the flock and familiarise themselves with the area that the birds winter in. All of this was achieved and much more. Especially when Larry Griffin (WWT) arrived in the afternoon to look for two geese that had collars he could download information from.
We had 158 bean geese plus two Juvenile Pinkfeet in one flock with others elsewhere. As the day progressed towards dusk we split into two groups to record roosting behaviour. At Fannyside we saw the flock of 158 birds come into East Fannyside Loch in two group well after dusk. About the same time Larry and Mike reported a flock of 51 flying to roost at Darnrig where they were later found in amongst quite a large number of Pinkfeet. Larry with some assistance has been able to download information from two birds which has given us fantastic information on their wanderings here plus Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
Our winter total has now reached 209. Hopefully there is still time for others to come in and increase the flock size.
