Tuesday, February 03, 2015
We've finished translating the main part of the book. Greger wanted to start the appendix on his own as he had a lot of things to look up, so I had this lovely crisp, sunny morning free. I drove to Ardmair. There wasn't much on the sea, so I looked out over the now-empty sheep paddocks where greylag geese were feeding. Two geese flew in as I watched, and promptly went to sleep. I'd had an impression as they landed of darkish birds lacking the very pale grey wing panel of the greylags.
When they eventually began to walk about and graze, I could see that they were closer in size to the greylags than pink-footed geese are, and that their legs were orange. (Later I would see from the pics that the white border to the tail was narrower than on a pink-foot.)
I'm pretty sure these are bean geese, and given the bill patterns (one bird had a narrower orange band than the other) I would say they are the rossicus, or tundra race.
Driving home I pulled into the recycling road, where loads of red deer were loafing on the moorland below. As I emerged again, a buzzard remained on a pine sapling long enough for me to snap it from the car.
I got the newspaper and drove home, where Greger had made a good start on the appendix and had also had a work-out.
// posted by Christine @ 5:47 AM 
