Beans on Bog

I couldn’t resist another go at the Beans yesterday. After breakfast a check of the map showed one of the bird had phoned home from an easily accessible and favored autumn stubble field. I headed up as soon as I could (Beast and children had to be taken care of first) and when I finally arrived at the field there were still geese there. Before I had even got out of the car though they flew off towards their favoured peat bog. I managed some flight pictures and then headed for the bog. The bog is not an easy site to access which is probably why it is favoured by the geese and I am always wary that I will disturb the geese here. I saw the flock flying around the bog and counted 46 birds which was the same number that had left the stubble field. My pictures also revealed 5 tagged birds (3 metal collars and 2 GPS) but I could not read any other than 27 (the same result as yesterday). I then headed down to the river where a flock of 55 was resting on the river bank with one GPS collar amongst them. So I had 101 birds in total of which 6 were tagged. So unless 2 new birds arrived over night I erred on the side of caution with my count of 99 yesterday. Last year I counted 98 on 4 September which increased to 144 on 7 September so there is still hope that more birds will arrive. I also hope to get better views such that I can read collars and also identify family groups.

Other birds were thin on the ground with raptors again being surprisingly scarce although a Buzzard did show well.

The flock of 46 Taiga Bean Geese (sædgjess) in flight over the peat bog

4 of the collars. Only 27 is identifiable with certainty

27 top right. A metal collar bottom left (this bird was with another metal collared bird - the pair in the previous picture). The three birds bottom right are a bird with winf damage that may be a result of gunshot and a metal collared bird who seemed to be paired to a GPS collared bird (which had to be 30)

the Glomma River - the flock of 55 geese are just right of centre

Common Buzzard (musvåk) with Jackdaw (kaie)