Just before midday, I met John Hoar at LMGP who told me that he had seen a
lone Brent Goose about 45 minutes earlier in a newly sown crop field just to the
north of the pit, north of the Marlow Road. He said that it had flown off south
and he hadn’t seen it again and thought it might have come into the pit, which
it hadn’t. I checked the fields adjacent to the pit with no success, so decided
to revisit the original location accessed just north of the farm shop at Emmetts
Farm. I quickly found a lone Brent Goose in the second field NE of the farm,
but it was very distant. Shortly later, a low flying Red Kite flushed it and it
flew off south towards the Marlow Road, but then doubled back and landed a field
closer to me, though still quite distant. The paleness of the flanks was always
quite obvious, as was the clear demarcation of the black neck to the paler upper
breast, so I immediately thought that this might actually be a Pale-bellied
Brent as opposed to the more regular Dark-bellied birds – Dave Cleal also
thought this. I was struggling to remember the actual variability that
Dark-bellied might show, so took some distant record shots – Graham Smith turned
up and had a text that said one of the key features was lack of dark belly
between the legs – this bird appeared to have a white belly in this region from
what I could see.
On returning home after school pick up and children ferrying, a quick look
at my downloaded records and a few google images and Collins, it appears that
this bird probably is a Pale-bellied Brent – I will upload them to the Bucks
website, but the bird was distant, so they are heavy crops. It was too distant
to even be sure if it was adult or juvenile, but the images appear to show an
adult bird. I understand from Mike Collard that he could not locate the bird at
2:30pm which coincided with shooting in the area, but hopefully it will be
relocated (Adam Bassett)