I'll skip the 'Oh dear I left it a while again' apology and get on with it, shall I? Much of the weekend was spent hunched over the 'puter, as shall be told later. When not staring at a screen and cursing search engine designers and website updaters, I went on a couple of east side trips with the folks. Yarner was lovely again, with more Treeecreeeper goodness and another meeting with what might have been the same group of Siskin and Redpoll [though with more Siskin this time] near the mine. The Three Reservoirs had some nice birds too, and were for once not that busy [I guess we caught them at a good time on a good day - the car park was pretty full when we arrived]. 7 redhead Goosander and a dozen Cormorant [all carbo] were on Kennick; Trenchford and the starting-to-refill Tottiford were quiet. The woods held some nice tit and 'crest bands, but star birds were the 8 very showy Crossbills near Kennick :D They were feeding in a couple of larches [there are some left, it seems..] and were only the third good look my parents have ever had [not counting flyovers and red and green blobs in distant conifer tops]. An even split of males and females, they were joined for a couple of minutes by of all things a female GSW - which landed next to them and started banging away at the larch cones herself! I've never seen a woodpecker go at cones before, though as they'll visit seed feeders, I suppose there's no reason they wouldn't.
Yesterday I bashed the Patch and finally managed to be behind the Palace when the LTT band was moving through. It still took a bit of work, [dodging speeding cars, mostly] but I was eventually rewarded with a Nuthatch :) Just to ice the cake, a couple of Bullfinches then chose to fly into a nearby treetop. Brilliant. After more diligent job-search-related business [which only caused me to bang my head against a wall a couple of times..] I had a look at the Harbour, where a couple of Rockits and at least 7 Purple Sands were among the boulders [I don't think that it's going to be possible to properly count them - at least without disturbing them - now that the pretty new blue boulders are covered in weed. There are too many places to hide; I think even using a kayak wouldn't get them all.] A calm Bay gave at least 3 GC and 2 BN Grebes in the north part of the Bay, plus a brief glimpse of the LT Duck off Preston [the distinctive colour and silhouette combination make it pickable at a very long distance if you don't have waves in the way {{Yes, a big 'if'}}]. No good gulls, of course.
This morning I went over to Cockington [having waited since last week for the mud to dry out a bit] [you get some impressive mud there, proper Devonshire Red stuff too, a lot of it] [[I'll get on with it now..]]. This is the south-western end of my Patch, somewhere I've been going to since I was teeny tiny small, it's full of history and memories. Also still full of brambles [in the borders and engulfing the apple trees..] and now breeze blocks - as they build all over the back of the Court - and less a lovely mature Lime Tree [another victim of the pogrom]. Hmm. Still, there are woods and ponds and proper fields - the only real farmland on my Patch.
I was hoping for a Coot on a pond, but got 49 Mallard [including assorted, er, assortments..] and 11 Moorhen instead. A Treeeeecreeeeper showed very nicely near the Gamekeeper's Cottage, and a couple of good sized groups of thrushes [mostly Redwing] included 5 Mistle [4 in one small field] but only a couple of Fieldfare. A crop field being strip-grazed held 50-odd mixed buntings, pipits, larks, wagtails and thrushes - viewed in sections as they were disturbed by the farmer moving the electric fence. Not a Patch Yeartick but very welcome were three Bullfinches in a thicket and then a surprise male on the hedge by the Lodge car park. Finally, this afternoon there were 56 GC Grebe and 3 Razorbill off Blackball.
Right then, to what I've been doing when not searching for gainful employment [[or should that be 'Being rejected by..']], looking for, or even at birds and so on. Yes, I'm talking about that goose...
'Known S x B hybrid, with Barnacles on The Fleet, first seen at Lodmoor' was what I had to go on. I've assumed that my Elders and Betters are right and it's the same bird, so all that remains is the question I have to ask; "How do we know it's a hybrid when it looks like a 1w?" There's a very simple answer, of course. The literature says that Snow Geese adopt an adult or near-adult head and body plumage from early November, finishing by February, with bare parts pinking up more slowly - sometimes staying partly dark through into 2w. So if it showed up in say, November, looking like it does now, then case closed, guilty as charged. Maybe it did. Maybe it's been there for years. Or maybe not - if it only arrived this month, or if it arrived earlier and was darker than it is now then how can you rule out a 1w?
So I went a' searching. Lodmoor's RSPB, with a sightings page and everything - surely a nice 'hybrid' would be mentioned.. Nope. Dorset Birds have changed their sightings site to a shiny new blog format which is very nice but has nothing before the 1st of January and no mention of any Snow x Barnacle hybrids. Dorset's mighty bloggers noted the Barnacle flock, but no mention of any tricky hybrids nor did any appear in any of the group shots posted. Looking for a nice hybrid that matched the Curry bird closely enough to say 'yes, they can look that similar so it's not safe to call as pure' would be perhaps an easier route? Yeah, right... Every one of them [mostly American, it has to be said] was definitely odd, with clear plumage and structural abnormalities easily visible to the quality of views I had at Curry Moor. The only productive thing I found was a record shot of [if I remember rightly] a 'juvenile' in Norfolk on 22/1/2002 - this being a white morph it's hard to tell how adult the head and body are, especially from a not great photo, but the bare parts are still dusky.
If I was properly hardcore I'd be back up there with a net cannon to get some DNA [ok, maybe not] - or at least get another look and maybe see something I missed [or maybe even see some more pink.. ;) ]. Being between careers and with the price of petrol, spending possibly several days haring around trying to find it again [You know it won't be where I left it..] isn't a viable option, and as it's been dismissed, nobody's going to find it for me [[Aww, diddums.. I hear you cry]]. It's funny, really. I went there all hopeful, got very negative upon first sight, did research and realised I was wrong, then got told no I wasn't...
What next? Well, I suppose I could do what I should have done from the start; do as I'm told and junk it without question. Or I could say "All the evidence I have points to it being a 1w blue morph Lesser Snow Goose - the only opposing evidence is hearsay*." and then go on with the logical progression. After all, I had to go digging around in Cramp et al to find out about 1w moult timings and why should I assume everyone else has? A seemingly adult Snow Goose with dark bits makes you instantly think hybrid and once someone says so, it sticks.**
[[*Namely: {Famous Somerset Birder} said {Famous Dorset Birder} said it was a known hybrid Snow x Barnacle]]
[[**I know I'm going to look like even more of an idiot than normal if this thing turns up on the Exe next winter looking just the same as it does now, but what the hell...]]
Better yet, I can stop going on about this on my blog and write something that's actually interesting for other people to read!
But why start now? ;)
PYL: 84
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