Slammanen in the fog, January 11th 2025

 

I’ve dipped some birds a number of times, over the years.  It took me over 25 years to finally see Wryneck.  I’ve missed six consecutive Penduline Tits.  I can’t for the life of me get eyes on a Barred Warbler, and it’s beginning to be embarrassing to be honest.  But the crown for most frustrating dipped bird has to go to the Taiga Bean Goose.  With just two locations to reliably pick these stunning geese up in the UK, you’d think it would be fairly easy to either spend a few days combing through Norfolk’s amazing geese flocks or hunt down the 200+ birds that make the Slammanen plateau their home. 

I’ve tried.  Oh, how I’ve tried.  I’ve done three separate trips to the Slammanen area and missed the Taiga’s each time.  I’ve done three winter geese trips to north Norfolk, and seen some incredible sights… but never a Taiga Bean. So this was it.  2025, January, the biggest flock of Taiga Bean Geese seen in Scotland in years, a detailed guide from a quality birder to give at least five viewing locations to all but guarantee seeing the elusive TBG… what could go wrong?  And as an added bonus, a likely-to-be-wild Ross’s Goose was doing a circuit between reservoirs and grazing areas in Ayrshire.  The combination of great geese was too much to resist, and so, early in the morning of January 11^th I set off with K for points north of Glasgow with hopes of seeing the long-necked, dark-backed Bean geese in the surrounds of Fannyside Loch.

For those who don’t know, the Bean Goose is thought by some to be split into two species, fabalis (Taiga) and rossicus (Tundra).  There are size and structural differences, and some plumage/colouration differences (bill pattern etc) that differentiate the two (sub)species from one another.  For me - no geneticist, no scientist, no expert – I feel that they are two species and they don’t mingle here in the UK.  Tundra Bean Geese are by no means common in the UK, with only maybe 25 sightings reported across the winter of 2024-25, but they’re much easier to catch up with as they occur in a more widespread pattern, carried in flocks of other species.  There are several wild individuals every year in our winter flocks across the main areas for geese, and a growing feral population living as “wild” in the midlands.  Taiga Beans are much less easy to see, and they are loyal to the same winter areas across decades.  Bigger, bulkier, longer-necked, the Taiga Beans have more extensive orange on the bill and distinct white edging on the darker feathers across the back. 

These are very vocal birds.  Reminiscent of a slightly deeper-voiced Pink-footed wink wink, they call constantly as they move in the way that most geese do.  I was listing the ways we would succeed, pretty much all the way to Glasgow.  We couldn’t fail to pick them up at the five locations we had mapped.  We couldn’t fail to hear them, and they’d definitely fly in to feed or roost.  We would spend all day there, waiting, if needs be, even though it was minus five degrees and the Ross’s Goose was the bird that we were really here to see.  Brimming with confidence -  perhaps it was fair to say that I was over compensating in confidence - I was mid “future brag” when we hit the wall of fog that enveloped the Slammanen plateau and reduced visibility to less than 20 metres.

Crawling at 20 miles per hour and slowing towards the first pinned site, my heart sank.  How would we see geese in these fields?  There’s the right to roam north of the border, but this area is near the National Shooting Centre of Scotland and I didn’t fancy being buckshot (or worse) for my troubles.  We had the windows down, icy air pouring into the car, desperate to hear the squealing honks of the geese, slowly moving on thick frost and in thicker fog.  An eerie sense of total isolation wrapped me, and I wondered if we would drive the 200 minutes home without seeing a single actual bird.  Then, from the depths of the fog, ahead and above, came the sound we were focusing on!  The unmistakable, unmissable, inimitable winking of large geese that must have been flying over us!  It’s hard to slam on the brakes at 4 miles per hour, but slam I did, and the car obeyed at a leisurely ice-slide pace.  We scrambled out of the doors and began chasing after the sounds.

Two miles of walking in total white-out fog and though we thought we’d heard a couple of wild calls ghosting in the gloom, we had no trace of the Taiga Bean Geese.  We trudged back to the car to try for the second pinned site, a little higher in elevation where there was a slow clearing of the fog.  We drove there, with no sight nor sound of the Geese, and checked the remaining pinned locations.  Nothing.  Not a whisper.  Glum, ready to admit defeat and aim at finding a small white goose at one of six disparate sites in Ayrshire, we took one final turn following one of K's weird (but often accurate) geographical-ecological hunches and drove a couple of miles through habitat perfect for geese.  Nothing.  More fog, but no birds at all.  We U-turned and drove back to the junction, ready to leave Slammanen (possibly forever), with me muttering that perhaps fabalis is a sub-species after all and not worth a full-fat tick, when K shouted that he could see shapes in the mist.  Slamming on for real this time, we piled out and in the dwimmering light saw the long-necked outlines of 120+ Taiga Bean Geese grazing in the margins of the field we’d driven past half a dozen times.  At that moment, calling geese began to fly over, low down, clearly showing their orange legs, and I tried desperately to get a photograph to prove that I finally had Taiga Bean Goose (by then restored to full species status, of course) firmly on my life list.  I failed to secure the photo – my telescope showed the detail of feather edges and bill patterns but my camera might as well have been capturing brachiosaurs in the mists of prehistoric swamp.

                    Brachiosaurs (or possibly Taiga Bean Geese) in the gloom at Slammanen.

In the car, confidence restored, we circled Glasgow before achieving enough orbital velocity to slingshot to a more westerly area, and followed directions to Raith Reservoir where a fellow birder had seen the Ross’s Goose in the previous week.  This bird seems to range fairly widely, and we were aware that we probably wouldn’t see it at the first stop.  Ready to hunt all afternoon, we pulled up at the side of a tiny road to check a flock of Canada Geese grazing, and there, in the centre of a ring of the big, noisy geese was a remarkably petite, dazzlingly white Ross’s Goose.  The “cute” snub bill, the dark primary tips, the way the bird cautiously kept at least one layer of Canada Geese between itself and us meant it came across as a fascinating study. 

Generally, Ross’s Geese are regarded as escapes in North Western Europe, but this last two years there has been a sea-change following the observation of a wild Canadian ringed pair of birds that wintered in mainland Europe in 2023/24.  Add in the high numbers of Snow Geese that have arrived in Britain in the winter of 2024/25, and Ross’s Geese arriving in the Western Isles, Shetland, and certain sites across Western Scotland, and it’s difficult to dismiss this bird as an escape.  These things are subjective, and there’s not really a truly scientific way to prove the authenticity or otherwise of an unringed bird like this; however, the gut feeling from the field was that this was a wary bird joining a large flock of grazing geese.  Perhaps biased because I’ve invested the time and energy into seeing it, I am counting this Ross’s Goose as a wild bird and enjoyed the encounter in the spirit in which it was intended: to spend time learning about a rare bird that I have not had the pleasure to see outside of pens at collections.

With time to spare, we moved on to see a young male American Wigeon on a reservoir in Dumfriesshire, before deciding to break up the journey home with a stop at RSPB Geltsdale to see if any Black Grouse would show in the snow.  We’d parked in the 20 centimetres of snow that was present in the pristine valley, and walked only half a mile towards the slopes where the Grouse tend to perch later in the day when a stunning male flew across the path and as we tracked him, led us to six other birds perched up distantly.  Seeing grouse explode from the verges of the path, the cold, crisp air and crunching snow helped me to reflect on a day of contrasting views.  From fog-bound glimpses of Taiga Bean, to lucky first-time spotting of a Ross’s Goose, to opportune stopping to see American Wigeon, to beautiful trekking in hills for Black Grouse, this day had been a success and showed the importance of researching both the bird you’re searching for and knowing the land well enough to improvise when you need to.