Langtoft's January Celebrities

Over the last couple of days, I've had a few bits in the Langtoft area. Today at Baston & Langtoft Pits, I had a pair of Smew on the traditional location of the old wader scrape: the first of the winter on my old patch:




I was also pretty surprised to find that, when two redpolls flew over and landed in a nearby alder, one of them was in fact a female Mealy Redpoll (the other being a pretty standard cabaret). When it finally came out of the tangle of branches and perched in a nearby ash, it was fascinating to see the bird was ringed on it's right leg; unfortunately, views were far from adequate to read any numbers or letters.



Also hanging around still are a couple of European White-fronted Geese at West End Pits. The Greylags here can be painfully elusive among the thick vegetation on the islands, although with a bit of 'encouragement' they often come waddling off the island and in to the water. No sign of the Tundra Beans lately though - as much as I'd like to suggest they've gone, they've disappeared for six weeks at a time previously so they're probably still somewhere in the Deepings - we have a lot of Greylags.