Wild goose chase
OCTOBER is a good time for wild geese. Sadly, most places that used to have flocks of White-fronted Geese no longer do so. I live near one, the Avon valley in Hampshire, where hundreds of White-fronts and Bewick’s Swans used to be the norm, now replaced by a few score Canada Geese and feral Greylags.
I enjoyed some great days in the Towy valley near Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire, watching 1,200 or so White-fronts. It was there – in another flock that no longer exists – that I learned how to identify bean and Pinkfooted Geese, and picked out the odd Barnacle Goose too.
Now Pink-footed – with a small, round, very dark head and bill contrasting with the fawn-buff breast and barred greyish back – is the ‘standard’ goose in many places, such as the Solway, central Scotland, Lancashire and Norfolk. See whether pink as opposed to orange feet and bill marks are easy to distinguish in tricky autumn light!
Greylags are bigger and paler, with a big orange bill; Pink-feet have a dark bill with a pink band. They are typically pink legged, but quite a few in feral flocks at least have bright orange legs. Pink-feet have darkish grey upperwings, while Greylag has much more contrast, with a very pale grey forewing.
Greylags rattle and cackle, while Pink-feet have a more musical gobble mixed with a distinctive high wink-wink note in flight.
Look hard for a bean goose or two mixed in. They can be difficult to distinguish in a flock of Pinkfeet, but easier with White-fronted Geese. Beans – now split into two species, Taiga Bean and Tundra Bean – are big, dark and rangy, with long necks, and look dark brown above with crisp pale bars.
The bill is either dark with a pale orange band (Tundra) or almost all orange (Taiga) and the legs look yellowish- or bright orange. The upperwings are darker overall than either of the other species.
White-fronted Geese come in two subspecies: Greenland (found in Wales, Scotland and Ireland) and Russian (found at Slimbridge WWT, Glos, and in East Anglia). Greenland birds have orange bills, Russian ones pink bills, and both have bright orange legs.
Adults are obvious, with a white forehead and black belly patches, but juveniles lack these characters and are harder, especially if they turn up alone. They are neat, agile, rather small geese. Whitefronts call with a high, yodelling chorus with a ‘catch’ in the notes, like lyo-lyok. Rob Hume