Pink-footed Goose!

The Pink-footed Goose - a patch and county tick!

I have been stuck inside for a couple of days doing the university admissions interviews so it was a relief to finally get out to Port Meadow again this afternoon. The conditions were almost perfect for the roost, being fairly overcast with low wind speeds, with the floods receding just enough to expose a line of islands along the banks of the Thames.

I decided to view from the Thames path and walked north from the Perch towards where most of the gulls were loafing. Almost immediately I picked out the regular 2cy Caspian Gull that has been around for a couple of weeks now, together with two Yellow-legged Gulls. Slightly further north was a very nice 1cy Caspian Gull which I think I have also seen a couple of times previously, but this is by far the best views I have had of it - what a bird! This is my favourite sort of scapular pattern in Caspian Gulls, with the only markings being a fine line down the middle of each feather.

Digiscoped image of the 1cy Caspian Gull

Another digiscope of the 2cy Caspian Gull

An intriguing subadult individual was also present along with the 1cy, which I think is probably a 4cy Caspian x Herring Gull hybrid. I considered the possibility that it could be a very advanced 3cy Caspian Gull, which might explain the lack of long white tongues on the underside of the primaries, but there are also multiple things wrong about the structure/head shape.

Hybrid together with the 1cy Caspian Gull

It was getting pretty dark so I put my camera down and was searching through the masses of arriving gulls in the gloom when I heard a "wink wink" call overhead. I looked up and saw a small, short-necked goose fly directly over me - I panicked slightly as the camera was on the floor, but managed to get a few shots of it as it went east before continuing north over the flood, skirting the margin of Burgess Field. I actually thought I had taken a lot more photos but it turns out I had fumbled badly wearing thick gloves and mostly missed the shutter button!

I do not hear "grey geese" very often so am not too familiar with the calls, although it sounded different to the feral Gambel's White-fronted Geese that sometimes roost on the meadow. Therefore I thought it was probably a Pink-footed Goose or maybe an outside chance of a Bean Goose, but at the same time was anxious that I had misheard and therefore didn't want to report it until I had checked the photos (not that it was twitchable anyway). I was getting very cold at this point but just before I left, I had another 2cy Caspian Gull, which I was quite pleased with as I was pretty sure I had seen a second 2cy bird last week but it was too far away to clinch as I was viewing from Burgess Field gate. Three Caspian Gulls in an evening is pretty good going for the Port Meadow roost!

Upon downloading the photos from the camera I was slightly frustrated to find that they were all poor quality, being extremely noisy and dark. I've reproduced them here basically unedited apart from cropping and bumping up the contrast/shadows a bit - it seems that denoising them just obscured the limited detail visible. I had hoped that I would have been able to reveal some bill detail but the bird is just too small in the frame.

Despite this, I think the photos are identifiable as a Pink-footed Goose - the thin tail band with plenty of white at the tip eliminates Bean Goose, whilst the overall compact shape and head/bill profile, together with the dark rump and wing pattern, prove that I wasn't going mad and photographed a Greylag Goose or something. I circulated the photos around a hurriedly-assembled "rarities committee", who luckily all agreed that it looks good for Pink-footed Goose, so I put the news out. Bizarrely, it seems that Birdguides rejected the submission, which has never happened to me before.

I think this really shows the importance of always carrying the camera as I definitely wouldn't have been confident enough to claim this based on just hearing it call and getting poor views through bins/scope - it would have just gone down as "probable grey goose sp.". The Pink-footed Goose therefore becomes my 158th patch bird and is also a county tick - this species is surprisingly rare in Oxfordshire (much less than annual, often untwitchable) and I'm aware that there are a few big county listers still missing it from their totals!