Sunday 28th January

"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." or so I thought on deciding to head back to Ken Dee Marshes to get a few snaps of the greenland white-fronted geese mentioned in my last post.

In fact it wasn't as simple as that.  On arrival at the RSPB car park, a returning couple reported that they had seen neither the geese in question, nor any willow tits - just lots of the usual tits, a woodpecker and some nuthatch.

Their evidence was proved partly correct when my first ever visit to the goose viewing platform revealed nothing but a couple of crows and some unidentifiable ducks in very distant flight.

There was a sign that prospects could be better when a small group of fieldfares took up station in a large tree near the main path.  However at the first hide I saw exactly what they saw, with the bonus that, while Mr Woodpecker was attached to one feeder, Mrs Woodpecker arrived on the other.

On regaining the main path, I saw a young red deer turn tail and make into the undergrowth.  Continuing bright, low sun and the first sight of this year's snowdrops made it a pleasurable stroll along through the trees to the furthest hide, where I settled down to eat, observing the feeder right next to the side windows.

It was only five minutes before a single willow tit turned up and made several nervous raids on the peanuts whiel evading the attentions of the other birds.  This continued for a good twenty minutes or so.

Willow Tit and Blue Tit

I went to take a bit of a look out of the main windows to see nothing at all.  On returning to the feeder I sat it out again for ten minutes, but tit willow did not reappear.  I must have hit lucky.

After another fruitless visit to the goose viewing platform, I was asked by a couple of new arrivals if I knew the best place to look for the elusive Greenland white-fronted geese.  I told them what I knew - but added that it must be their day off.

Then, taking a last look down the loch, there they were, a group of about thirty just visible in a fold in the landscape about four hundred yards away.  I was simply pleased to get a good enough photo to be able to identify them for certain.

Greeland White-fronted Geese

There was another skein of geese feeding on the road back to Glenlochar, but they proved to be barnacles.

Thursday 25th January

Thankfully househunting activity has ceased now but has again seriously impeded my nature activities over the past month - as will doubtless the actual move once it comes about.

I got out on the bike on New Year's Day, more for my health than anything else but did encounter a field full of geese that I stopped to observe through the binoculars.  I swithered over whether they were pink-footed geese or greylags but the resulting photo decided in favour of the former, betraying the decisive 'heads dipped in chocolate' appearance.

Heads dipped in Chocolate? Pink-footed Geese

A couple of weeks ago, I started another bike ride from Ken Dee Marshes and encountered a group from the South who were looking for the Greenland White-fronted Geese there. On a cold morning, I wondered briefly whether to join them.  The reward for not doing so was a close up of the rear end of a roe dear but there wasn't anything else that day apart from hearing a woodpecker.  Service was slow in the pub and I had to do a Tour de France effort to get back in time for other commitments.

There have been one or two other minor compensations.  A wren has visited the garden twice and there was definitely a now rare kestrel resting by the A75 on a cold househunting day.

On a break from house hunting in Chopwell Woods, a woodpecker could readily be sighted and there was a goldcrest feeding on the ground near the path.  This was interesting as a lady has posted on Dumfries and Galloway Wildlife and Birding that a goldcrest has regularly been feeding on her lawn. I surmise that they are struggling to find the small insects they eat in the trees just now.