Red-breasted Goose!

On the 31st October, we headed down to Milford-on-sea in Hampshire. Our quarry was a red-breasted goose that had been present with a flock of brent geese in the fields around Sturt Pond for several weeks. This stunningly-colourful small goose breeds in Arctic Siberia and winters around the Black Sea and in Azerbaijan. They are threatened with extinction, following a large decrease in numbers in recent years and increased threats to their breeding and wintering grounds from increasing development. Very small numbers arrive in Britain each year, almost always with flocks of barnacle or brent geese in late Autumn. It has been a bit of a bogey bird for me, and I have tried (and failed!) to see it twice around the Exe Estuary in Devon and at Christchurch Harbour in Dorset, but I was hoping for a fourth time lucky.

We arrived at Milford-on-sea, only to be greeted by the sight of a complete lack of any geese in the fields surrounding Sturt Pond. We decided to continue, towards Hurst Point, hoping to come across a brent goose flock. Finally, we found several brents feeding on some of the grass islands in the Solent next to Hurst Point. Scanning them revealed several wigeon and shelduck, and finally the red-breasted goose! It was feeding with five brent geese about 400 metres away, occasionally showing well, but generally hiding in the long grass. We watched it for about half an hour, before it disappeared into even longer grass, in which we couldn't see. It was a superb new species for me, my fifth BBRC rarity, and certainly one of my favourite species that I have seen in Britain. Nearby were several rock pipits and turnstones, but nothing else of any note.

We then headed to Portland, hoping to find any of the scarcer species that had been seen around Ferrybridge and Chesil Cove in the previous few days. At Ferrybridge, there were several bar-tailed godwits, turnstones, ringed plovers, dunlins, two grey plovers and one sanderling, as well as a single Mediterranean gull. Sadly there was no sign of any brent geese, and thus of my hoped for black brant geese. Chesil Cove was almost completely empty, with just a single Mediterranean gull of any note. Portland Harbour was of far greater interest, with a new species for me found off Portland Castle. It was a winter plumage red-necked grebe, a scarce winter visitor to Britain from Eastern Europe. It would only show for about five seconds at a time, before diving back under, but it was a very pleasing bird to see. There was nothing else of any note in the harbour, so we headed back to Hilfield very content with a great day.