Another fine sunny day at Welney, and Godwits are much in evidence. I didn't try and count them, but there must have been six or seven hundred bunched on the grassy bars in front of the main hide. A Marsh Harrier did its' best to disrupt things, and every now and then all the waders and ducks flew up and rearranged themselves, agitated as the harrier flew above the roost.
Away from the action, half hidden by a bank of dead reed stems was a white goose. A little smaller than the Greylags it was loafing with, it's black primaries were hard to see at first, but after a while it woke and refreshed itself with a stretch and a quick beat of wings. It was a Snow Goose. Maybe not a wild one, but who knows? Provenance being everything, especially when it comes to wildfowl, it would have been nice if it had arrived with a flock of Pinkfeet rather than loitering with the local little-better-than-farmyard 'Lags, but at least it wasn't tapping on the hide window waiting to be fed from the hand!
Definitely on the wild side was the Peregrine on Lady Fen. I presumed it to be the same bird as yesterday, a big beast with an aura that kept all other birdlife out of it's range even as it languished, soaking up the winter warmth on a small lump of something out on the soft field. I got to my van and drove round to get a closer look, and while I sketched it, another peregrine flew over my head and skimmed over the ploughed fields, putting up three great clouds of plovers and peewits.
