Mike Wallen recently raised the issue of 'neck-staining' in wildfowl and I present here an example of a 'feral' Lesser Snow Goose in Lancashire that shows such a trait. Neck-staining is quite common in wildfowl in Britain and may not necessarily relate to natural staining in the Arctic. The debate arose after I made claims that a heavily stained pair of Whooper Swans that arrived at Latimer Lake and over my village in early October had just freshly arrived from Iceland. Although this was most likely the case with these birds, staining cannot be used in isolation as a reason for vagrancy (Lee Evans)
