Here come the geese..

Having predicted in y/day's blog the likely arrival of wild geese onto the reserve, it turns out that they've already started to arrive. I heard this morning that a flock of 10 white-fronted geese were out on the marsh between Kingshill Farm and the Flood yesterday, where there was also 3 pink-footed geese. Today a pale-bellied brent goose was with a small flock of the more regular dark-bellied birds on the reserve. The pale-bellied race has a more westerly breeding distribution (Eastern Canada, Greenland etc) and most of the birds wintering in the UK head for Ireland or NE England. The dark-bellied birds are the ones regularly found along the south coast of Britain, extending round as far as the Wash. So the former is classed as "uncommon" in Kent. Out on the Swale, the female eider lingers and a flock of 7 common scoter flew west. Over 1000 dunlin visited the Flood over high tide today, along with smaller numbers of knot, grey plover, black-tailed godwit & turnstone. Lapwing numbers around the reserve have increased to c.3000 and there are 1000 golden plover. Raptors today included merlin & peregrine.