28 Dec 25 - Turkey Or Goose For Post-Christmas

If we were talking food, it would be neither for me as a life-long vegetarian. However, if they are live, then Goose sounds the better option: especially, if they are part of a national influx of Tundra Bean Geese and White-fronted Geese. The Poole Harbour WeBS team had arranged a WeBS count at ten to get everybody off their sofas after the Christmas break. Soon after I got home from counting my Brands Bay section, my phone pinged to say that a flock of five Tundra Bean Geese had been found, along with a much larger flock of White-fronted Geese. They were feeding in a field on the Ridge to Arne road. I decided to defer lunch and I headed back out. I arrived just after one and the field was typically empty. I say this as I've passed that field many times in the last nearly thirty years of living locally and rarely seen anything in it. There were a few of the local Birders waiting. I parked up and joined them. The Geese had been there, but they were spooked by a plane and had disappearing onto the new pools on Arne Moors. After about five minutes, the first party of White-fronted Geese reappeared.

White-fronted Goose: These are the nominate albifrons subspecies which breed in North Russia, eastward to North East Siberia. They winter in Europe, South Asia, North India, South China & Japan

White-fronted Goose: White-fronted Geese use to regularly winter in Dorset & Hampshire in the 80s and I regularly saw flocks of up to two hundred and fifty in the Hampshire parts of the Avon Valley in the early 80s. Sadly, those numbers are a thing of the past, due to climate change and probably other factors like population numbers. There were still up to twenty-three visiting the Poole Harbour area in some years in the first decade of this century. However, those numbers have dwindled to erratic individuals in a good year, between several years of absence. Therefore, a flock of this size is noteworthy

White-fronted Goose: It was also good to see youngsters in the flock with their more uniform underparts, with the adults having barred bellies and more extensive white at the base of the bill

White-fronted Goose: This flock continued to increase in the first half of Jan when it peaked at forty-four individuals

White-fronted Goose: They are noticeably smaller than this presumed local Greylag Goose

Within a few minutes, the Tundra Bean Geese family dropped in along with the rest of the thirty-eight White-fronted Geese. We were at the start of a cold snap which clearly had been very hard in neighbouring Europe and there was an unprecedented arrival of the two species throughout Southern England.

Tundra Bean Goose

Tundra Bean Goose

Tundra Bean Goose

Barnacle Goose: Soon after this Barnacle Goose flew in to join the White-fronted Geese

Barnacle Goose: It's not unusual to see a flock of Barnacle Geese passing through Poole Harbour towards the Fleet in the last couple of decades. These flocks aren't annual, but they occur often enough these days to not be as noteworthy as the Tundra Bean Geese and White-fronted Geese

Barnacle Goose: This is an immature individual and presumably it arrived with the Tundra Bean Geese and White-fronted Geese. We sometimes have lone individuals appearing in Poole Harbour, however, they are typically adults

The remarkable thing is I've don't remember seeing Geese in this field in the past and after some Greylag Geese and Canada Geese flew in, I was watching five different species of Geese feeding in the field. I added a few Egyptian Geese on the next visit. It is one of two short grassy fields next to the extensive land management work that has been going on for over two years on the adjacent Arne Moors, to create new inter-tidal marshes which will help to alleviate flood risk in the forthcoming decades to Poole and Wareham. Hopefully, this will be the first of many interesting Bird sightings in this area in the next few years.

This unremarkable-looking field might be set to become a lot more interesting now Arne Moors is being improved