Lingerers

It was the last Wetland Bird Survey (WeBS) count of the season today. It made a change to be over-dressed and being more worried about sunburn than my extremities freezing. The roost was sparsely populated throughout the count and only enlivened after high tide when a flock of 340 Dark-bellied Brent Geese came off the fields for a wash and a brush up.

Here's a shot of a few of them taken with the zoom cranked up to 30 times which I took laying down as the wind was right up (you can see the waves breaking in the background),

If the Stour Estuary stats are a reflection of trends elsewhere, 2012 was a very poor breeding season for these chaps up on the Taimyr Peninsula. Less than 1% of birds counted on the estuary were juveniles. Populations do fluctuate and their productivity is tied in with lemming abundance. Plenty of lemmings, means plenty of food for the Arctic Foxes. When lemmings have a bad time, the brent goslings become the foxes favoured food.