Great White Egret

I had a chance to travel further than the Dale today and thought I would check out the Taiga Beans. It was a lot weather than I had expected and viewing conditions were not ideal. On the river there was a very large flock of Greylag Geese (ca.800) which I have not seen at this location before. It was difficult to see to much detail but I could see no Beans amongst them. I then drove up to some favoured fields (no geese had phoned home this morning so I was having to use old fashioned birding skills to find them) and immediately saw lots of geese very close to the road. I felt that I was in luck but these geese turned out to be 750 Canada Geese (a very large flock) and a few Greylag. The Taiga Beans were in the same field but way in the distance where accurately counting them was hard enough and reading any collars impossible. I counted 101 meaning no new arrivals since last week. 

The Taiga Bean Geese in the background

If it had been the Beans and not the Canadas at this range then I would have had no problem reading the collars

I stopped at Nordre Øyeren on the way back and twitched a Great White Egret that was found on Sunday. I also heard a Red-throated Pipit amongst a flock of Meadow Pipits which also contained a Tree Pipit so I had a good set of calls to compare to. Svellet had a lot of waders at long range with at least 190 Dunlin being a good count. There were a few Little Stints amongst them and I suspected some Curlew Sands but I couldn’t nail the ID.

Great White Egret (egretthegre)

This rather long video of the Great White Egret shows it catching a fish which it needs a few attempts to swallow. It then seems to get stuck in it throat and can be seen moving in the throat before the Egret drinks and almost looks like it is wretching in an attempt to get the fish to move down its long, thin throat. Towards the end it also looks like it is snapping at flies.