Friday 25th November

Not much in the way of reports, just Mary's WTE at Port Wemyss and Mary-Ann's 3 woodcock at Seal bay. 

In goose news, Malcolm was in touch to try and answer Peter's questions about low white-front numbers yesterday. He writes "I've now had news from Tony Fox in Denmark, who monitors Greenland Whitefronts throughout their range, and he tells me that (a) it seems to have been a *very* poor breeding season with low numbers of young and (b) somewhat surprisingly there still seem to be many more birds than usual at this date still in Iceland, where they, too, have been experiencing the warm southerlies that we had until very recently. So, two of your guesses were correct, and, while we can expect more to arrive here, the final total will very likely be down on last winter's 6-7000."

This fits with reports I was reading the other day of very low numbers of Bewick's swan in the UK at the minute, also thought to be related to exceptionally warm conditions in the Arctic this autumn. Thanks to all the above.

pic c/o Neil McMahon