Wednesday, 30 October 2024

A feeding location for those Greylags

Based on a hunch, late this afternoon we had a look at some fields between Carew Newton and St Florence and managed to track down the flock of greylags. 

We noted c.150 feeding in a cereal stubble field. Several minutes earlier we had seen a smaller flock of 20 or so  in flight over the Carew/Sageston area. These might have dropped in to feed somewhere else nearby. There are several fields that look quite promising for geese. 

Earlier in the year we had seen several greylags in this area plus a Greenland white-fronted Goose. The geese today were a bit too far away to determine if there were other species in the flock but, based on size, all were probably greylags. 

Late this afternoon, good numbers of herring gull were regularly flying over in a south-easterly direction from various inland fields. They were almost certainly heading to Caldey Island where there is a large herring gull roost.

We went over to Landshipping again, hoping to see the geese flying in somewhere at dusk, but we might have been a bit too late.  We could hear occasional greylag calls but saw only one flying upriver towards the Eastern Cleddau. 

Other birds included 300+ lapwings, 30+ redshanks, 6 greenshanks and a few dunlin coming in to roost. Hundreds of black-headed gulls were again preparing to roost off Sprinkle Pill. A kingfisher was also present at Landshipping.