WINTER’S WILDLIFE I do love two for the price of one
Nothing brings joy to a checklist-obsessed twitcher than being given an armchair tick. These quirky events happen when the custodians of ornithological records give approval to previously unaccepted sightings.
Such declarations come after the provenance of far-travelling birds is confirmed, tricky identifications are finally resolved, or when science decides one bird is in fact two or more separate species.
Splits, as they are known by birders, are becoming all the more common with advances in genetic research, although a recent pronouncement about one of our most mysterious birds has been years in the making.
The bean goose has been arguably the least understood of all British birds.
Looking at my childhood books, they hardly get a mention. The Observer’s Book of Birds gives only four lines, while the AA Book of British Birds lumps it with the distantly related pinkfooted goose.
As my birding horizons began expanding in the 1980s, I became aware that bean geese came in two distinctive shapes and sizes that had different wintering arrangements here in the UK.
The elegant, long-necked “taiga” bean goose, hailing from the forests of northern Scandinavia and Russia, would flock to Stirlingshire and Norfolk’s Yare Valley. Tundra bean geese arriving from east of the Urals were far less predictable and were influenced by the severity of the weather.
Since 2018, the British Ornithologists’ Union has recognised tundra and taiga bean geese as two separate species, giving me an extra bird on my spotted list without getting off my backside.
Today up to 250 taiga bean geese, and a slightly larger number of tundras, visit the UK each winter.
My encounters with both species have been sporadic over the years, but a recent trip to the RSPB’S Lakenheath reserve in Suffolk provided a few photo opportunities of a family party rubbing shoulders with local greylag and Canada geese.
The “tundra beanies” exuded the spirit of the wilderness.
Normally shy, one bird did finally pose for the camera and display its distinctive identification features of compact size, short neck, bright orange legs and a two-tone black and orange bill.