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.