1500 hrs at Leeshaw in a cold W>5 with light rain showers but a good photographic sky with 100 % bright grey cloud cover.
Working on the assumption that birds attract birds I headed back today to check through the mounting flocks of geese in a hope of a stranger arriving. Also the thought of Osprey was in the back of my mind with more chance at Leeshaw than anywhere else local because of the number of Trout in the water which has a chance of holding the birds rather than just a lucky fly over.
Geese numbers were up with an estimation of over 400 birds , 70% Canada and 30% Greylag, though the scanning through today was much harder than the last check when they were all in one field whereas today they were scattered around 4 different fields.
The last field I checked held around 100 Greylag and low and behold, right in the middle of them, was a single Pink Footed. Not as exciting as what I was hoping for but good to find never the less. It was very hard to photograph at the distance as each time it turned away from me you could,nt tell it from the Greylags.
A fresh batch of Oystercatchers were just in with at least 15 birds all sticking near together.
The hour I had there flew by with activity throughout and given the time I could have spent much longer sifting through the various species.
1 Pink Footed Goose
c 270 Canada goose
c 130 Greylag
8 Mallard
1 Heron
9 Curlew
Plenty Lapwing on territory
15 Oystercatcher
1 Kestrel
1 Herring gull
5 LBB gull
sev small gulls
c150 Starling
2 Redshank
BS