White-fronted Goose
Yesterday afternoon my friend Dave Waddington found this White-fronted Goose within walking distance of both our houses. But I was busy cooking Sunday dinner yesterday, and this morning I had my first Covid jab booked, so I did not get chance to see it until this afternoon. I uploaded a photo of an adult White-fronted Goose recently with prominent black belly bars ( www.flickr.com/photos/timmelling/51001666498/in/dateposted/ ), but this one is a young bird, hatched in 2020 and lacking the belly stripes. It was feeding with a flock of Greylags near a small reservoir in South Yorkshire. I included a Greylag Goose here just to show the size difference. The White-front on the left weighs about 2.5kg (length 72cm, wingspan 148cm), whereas the Greylag on the right weighs about 3.6kg (length 82cm, wingspan 164cm). Female Greylags are a bit smaller, weighing about 3kg, but to my eyes the size difference between these two seems greater than the figures suggest.
There has been an unusually large influx of White-fronted Geese this winter and birds have been turning up in lots of unusual places. Two races of White-front winter in Britain; Greenland White-fronts which winter mainly in Scotland, and Russian White-fronts that winter mainly in the south. So living in Yorkshire means I don't get chance to see them very often near home. This one is a Russian bred bird, identifiable by its pink bill. Greenland bred bird have orange bills, though both races have orange legs. They get the name from the white patch around the bill.
White-fronted Goose
Yesterday afternoon my friend Dave Waddington found this White-fronted Goose within walking distance of both our houses. But I was busy cooking Sunday dinner yesterday, and this morning I had my first Covid jab booked, so I did not get chance to see it until this afternoon. I uploaded a photo of an adult White-fronted Goose recently with prominent black belly bars ( www.flickr.com/photos/timmelling/51001666498/in/dateposted/ ), but this one is a young bird, hatched in 2020 and lacking the belly stripes. It was feeding with a flock of Greylags near a small reservoir in South Yorkshire. I included a Greylag Goose here just to show the size difference. The White-front on the left weighs about 2.5kg (length 72cm, wingspan 148cm), whereas the Greylag on the right weighs about 3.6kg (length 82cm, wingspan 164cm). Female Greylags are a bit smaller, weighing about 3kg, but to my eyes the size difference between these two seems greater than the figures suggest.
There has been an unusually large influx of White-fronted Geese this winter and birds have been turning up in lots of unusual places. Two races of White-front winter in Britain; Greenland White-fronts which winter mainly in Scotland, and Russian White-fronts that winter mainly in the south. So living in Yorkshire means I don't get chance to see them very often near home. This one is a Russian bred bird, identifiable by its pink bill. Greenland bred bird have orange bills, though both races have orange legs. They get the name from the white patch around the bill.