Expecting the worst from Storm Otto, I woke this morning prepared for a day indoors. However, on getting out, the BBC had over-egged it again and although windy there was nothing like storm force winds. There was mixed sun and cloud with a temperature of 14C. Brian and I drove down Marsh Lane towars Winter's Pit again full of anticipation, but third time lucky in the field before the pit wa found a large flock of greylag geese with 12 russian white-fronts and a single pink-footed goose. The white-fronts have been around for a few weeks now but on our previous two visits we had not connected with them. In fact, by the time we returned to the car 3 hours later they had moved on to another part of the marsh. There are two races of white-fronted geese: Russian and Greenland - a sub-species. Greenland white-fronts winter in Ireland and Scotland while Russian white-fronts winter in England and Wales.
Feeling elated, we ticked off everything we could see around the pit and then headed off along the track at the back of the marsh. Large flocks of lapwing kept wheeling around in the air providing exciting displays and on the marsh itself were large numbers of wigeon, their whistling calls having a true feel of winter wilderness to them. There were good numbers of teal and mallard about too. Skylarks were singing well and there was a feel of spring in the air despite the wind.
At Skitter Ness we wandered a little further along the back before dropping down into its shelter for our christmas cake and tomato soup. We were entertained during lunch by watching a marsh harrier hunting the reed beds.
Lunch over, we headed back, finding plenty more teal feeding along the river bank and good numbers of noisy redshank along with a single avocet. Returning to Winter's we managed to locate coot, little grebe, blue tit and robing to take our total count to over 30. We had also seen roed deer and a brown hare, so another cracking day.
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