Autumn's Not Over Yet

The raw north wind continued today, and it continued to encourage some decent passage.  This morning a constant trickle of small Redwing flocks were heading north, along with my first three Fieldfare of the autumn. 

A walk along the beach late morning, for only half an hour, showed a lovely group of four Red-breasted Mergansers (two pairs) fly in from way out, bomb around in all directions for about five minutes (including up the Estuary a short way) before heading off east. 

Not quite patch gold, but better than patch bronze - so can only be patch silver!!

Then my day took a downward turn.  Just before midday I picked up six geese flying in from the south, but they were miles out to sea.  Their flight path though meant they were going to eventually fly right over my head so I just watched them.  The closer they got the more they flew into the sun, so they just looked all black. Then annoyingly just as they were in direct line with the sun they turned and started flying away high east... Nooooooo!!! And it got worse, as they flew into better light I could see they were grey geese! And definitely not Greylags. Gutting. They had necks, and seemed to show a bit of paler grey mid way along the upperwing, so they were probably White-fronts but it looks like I will never know. Drat.

To cheer myself up I had a look through the gulls on the Estuary. Three Med Gulls were as good as it got, a first-winter and two adults, including this ringed individual...

Such fab birds!