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Bank Hoiday Birding

It's a bank holiday in Scotland today so Crafty Green Boyfriend and I went for a birdwatching wander round Edinburgh. We started at the West End, where right in the city centre, 20 or more waxwings were enjoying flying around the trees and eating the berries.

We then wandered over to Arthur's Seat and had a lovely walk there! We had heard there had been a mandarin duck that had recently visited Dunsapie Loch on Arthur's Seat. We saw no sign of that ornate bird but we did see this goose, which quite frankly is a bit of a mystery. I'm not an expert on geese but ...

The white around the beak and the size suggests white fronted goose (the lack of black bars on its underside would indicate juvenile). The pale ring round the eye suggests lesser white fronted (which you might expect to have more white round the bill). The legs suggest pink footed. So what is it? Any ideas?
Crafted by Crafty Green Poet at 4:51 pm 
Looks like the gulls are trying to figure out what that goose is as well--at the very least, they don't seem to approve of his presence, although they are tolerating him politely.
 HKatz said...

I do like how in the photo the goose stands out, seems a little of place. Seems like that could be a story - The Mystery Goose of Arthur's Seat :)
 
Hi Juliet,

What a lovely way to spend your bank holiday, birdwatching.
I am sorry can't help you with the name of the Goose.

Happy weekend

8:18 pm Howard of Belvedere Mountain Express said...

I wasn’t aware of any kind of bank holiday today, even though each city in Scotland seems to observe whatever weird and wonderful holidays it likes. Maybe different districts have different holidays too, and today was a Dalry holiday but not a Marchmont one!

Can’t help with the goose, I’m afraid … and I’ve still not caught sight of a single waxwing!
 
Howard, it's the St Andrews Day bank holiday, though perhaps only the council and government etc take it
 
Grrrr to you lucky Scots with the extra bank holiday! Not fair!

Oh wait, I'm on maternity leave, every day is a bank holiday! I take it back ;-)

Lovely way to spend the day though. Baby and I take regular walks and yesterday we saw the most enormous heron I've ever seen. I could swear it was over 4feet. And really close!

9:36 am 
Bank holiday and it doesn't even look like it is a cold day up there - freezing here.

3:11 pm 
Oh, I've no idea what your birds are but I love looking at them and are they not posing for you in this picture?
 
We went on a quest once to identify eight different species of geese that visit Scotland, but I can't help. Lovely photos though!
 
Enlarged the photo and perused Tory Peterson et al (who have a special note about Peter Scott on the grey goose plate!) and I'm going with juvenile lesser white fronted - white eye ring but less white round beak because it's a young one, and its plumage looks patchy, like it's changing.

Oddly, we were at our very local pizza place which has a changing display of local photos on a TV - we like this, it's something to look at when waiting for our Neapolitan or paysanne - and there was a shot of some domestic geese which look quite a bit like greylags - last time we went duck feeding on the lake, along with the miscegenous collection of wild mallard and farm duck hybrids there was a very handsome grey goose who looked similar to them and to yours. I suppose a lot of farm geese are bred from greylags.
 ashok said...

Love the snap!
 Crafty Green Poet
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