Psilos Bird Journal
Sunday February 17th 2008
     
"Scottish madness " page 3
 
Mid afternoon and the familiar roar of geese in the air met my ears. Where I was sitting I couldnt see birds approaching from behind but whereever they were they were close. Then I saw them. About five hundred birds had gone down in a field about a quarter of a mile to my left. My dilemma was whether I took off to the hide nearer or did I wait it out where I was? In the end good birding sense took over and I stayed.
 
 
Ducks on the reserve included fairly good numbers of Wigeon and smaller numbers of Teal and Pintail. As wary as ever the Teal kept their distance and it needed a ridiculously large crop to produce any photos of them at all. They also flew passed in a tearing hurry. Hard enough to get in frame let alone get a decent shot.
 
In the end my patience did pay off. Once again the roar went up and the birds from my right were in the air and coming towards me. Hundreds of birds all calling and circling round in front of me. To be able to capture the chaos and the noise that ensures is so very hard. Birds are everywhere, layer upon layer of them dropping down. You want to capture them all but you cant. What you see is such a tiny part of the spectacle that unfolded before me.
     

     


 
Ok so I had photographed the birds coming down and the flock had grown very large in size. There was somewhere in the region of a thousand geese feeding in front of me. I was not about to spook them so I had to patiently wait and hope that they would naturally move on by themselves. In the end light and time began to run out....
In the fields at the back much larger numbers of geese fed. Ever so often they would take to the skies but they never came my way and my time was up. I wasnt going to get the shot that I wanted to round off the day.
Heading back to the car I reflected on the day. I had seen some wonderful wildlife and spectacular scenes. I had wanted to photograph Barnacle geese in flight and I had surely done that. I was almost at my car when the familiar roar met my ears. The geese were all up and I had missed them by less than ten minutes. If only I had waited....but in birding there will always be a thousand if onlys and surely another day. Time to head home with alot of happy memories.