Tundra Bean Geese, Slavonian Grebes and a Lesser Scaup in an unusual direction (for me)

I call myself the Manchester birder but it's a bit of a misnomer.  I do most of my birding in Manchester, that's true enough, but, due to the insane and unreasonable amount of traffic in this little city, I rarely venture out to the east or immediate south of the county.  That's the part of the map marked, "here there be dragons."  I focus on a flattened-on-the-east circle centred around west Manchester and if I venture out of it, you better believe I'm venturing to Lancashire, Yorkshire or parts far to the south.  The counties to the immediate south of Manchester within an hour long drive have become "lands I must traverse" in order to get to places where I may see birds.  In fact, I've spent so little time in north east Cheshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire and so on that it's all a bit of a mystery to me in terms of birds.  I have taught geography for quite some time, so I'm aware of place names and so on, but the reality of what birds I might find and where in the northern part of the midlands is unknown territory.  I'm way more familiar with the birding landscape of places hundreds of miles further away.

A chance to join Kris on a hunt to see genuinely wild Tundra Bean Geese a bit more closely than my last super-brief encounter late in 2025 at Plex Moss led to us driving 90 minutes to Willington Wetlands in Derbyshire in unbelievably clear sunshine.  The purity of the crisp air was an actual joy and it was one of those days you're glad of two things: that you're alive in such conditions and that you have a thick coat.  The viewing platform at Willington was small but perfectly formed and a mostly quick to make room crowd was taking it in turns to view the eight Tundra Bean lined up in a neat row alongside a motley cast of feral geese, Canadas, Greylags and a surprising number of Egyptian Geese.  The latter haven't really made inroads into west Manchester; the two we get for three weeks every year at Pennington Flash are something of a celebrity couple - plenty of plastic involved.  This, and the two Russian White-fronted Geese we saw with a huge flock of feral and Greylag at Whitemoor later sparked a discussion about these true vagrants: finding an unusual goose in such company often leads to suspicion being cast upon a bird and yet it seems that real vagrant geese just look for other familiar birds obviously feeding and roosting well.  Why would they not join such flocks?  Why would geese not join the feeding at, for example, WWT centres and feel safe amongst thousands of other wildfowl?  There is no question this influx of Tundra Bean and White-fronted Geese is a real wild event with the cold north easterly winds blowing.  I'm not sure what point I was even making except to say that I should probably check these receiving flocks as much as I check the traditional carrier species; it's a much more fluid picture than it sometimes appears to an amateur like me.

Whatever company the Tundra Bean chose to keep, they were stunning birds in the strong sunlight and though always a little too distant for my camera, the scope views showed the delicate size and the detail of the orange and black bills as they preened and roosted and settled in alongside a strangely patterned Canada-hybrid goose in the shallow water.  

A Redpoll and a Red Kite nearby were welcome additions to my newly formed year list, and news of three Slavonian Grebes a short hop away at Whitemoor Haye left us in high spirits.  Actually found on the quarry pits opposite the main lake, the grebes showed really well in scope views (again, too far for my camera really) and were feeding well.  Each of the three was catching plenty of fish and the crisp, clean lines of these gorgeous birds was obvious in the strong sunlight, the water glistening from black caps and snow white faces, red eyes glowing with reflected radiance.  There was no sign of the reported Red-crested Pochard, but the field behind us contained two White-fronted Geese grazing with a couple of hundred Canadas and Greylags.  We watched them into the bright sun, taking note of hunting Sparrowhawk and the slow accruing of wildfowl on the water.

The Mere in Shropshire isn't a million miles from where I was born but is not a place I've ever really paid attention to before.  A Lesser Scaup reported as a female has been present there for a little while, and Kris and I decided we'd go home that way as it only added half an hour on to the journey.  A walk on the icy surrounds of the lake and we quickly got eyes on the distant form of the American aythya duck in good sunlight.  Walking around to try and get better views we lost the bird amongst female Tufted Ducks and Goldeneye.  It's strange that this happens.  When you actually see a Lesser Scaup they look absolutely nothing like a female Tufted Duck: a different shape, different colour, different attitude in the water with that slightly "twisted" look due to the asymmetrical flank patterning, different bill size and shape.  Yet I find that when processing my photos I've taken a dozen (out of 400 of the Lesser Scaup) shots of a female Tufted Duck thinking I was watching the Lesser Scaup!  I can only think that the strong and lowering sunlight was painting gold on every bird on the water and drawing my eye to the white blaze around the bill as an easy to see ID feature.  How could we have lost this duck in such a relatively small area?  We retraced our steps to improve the light and found ourselves on a fishing platform with a good view of the diving ducks.  There, in the middle, pale and obvious and standing out from the crowd was the Lesser Scaup.  

We let the sun set as we watched the Lesser Scaup, listening to locals debate whether it was a female or a young male, but not really having enough expertise to offer an educated opinion.  It was a learning curve and the answer is: I don't really know.  The blaze and brown tones of the head seem to indicate a female bird, but the extensive grey on the flanks and back seem to lean towards a first winter male.  Time will tell.  This was my sixth Lesser Scaup in two years following a good summer movement of them across Manchester in 2024 and 2025; a sign of changing ranges of many American species of wildfowl with serious status changes apparent in Ring-necked Duck and Lesser Scaup and more subtle ones in movement of Snow and Ross's Geese.

It was a pleasure to explore beautiful areas of counties I rarely go to as opposed to going through, and always a delight to see wildfowl and water birds of the quality of today's sightings.  There is no pressure on me this year to list, and so I have the luxury of choosing what birds I wish to spend time learning about and experiencing.  None of the birds were new to me today, but they all had something of that feeling of freshness of experience, with opportunities to study their behaviour rather than rushing away to the next site, the next bird, the next tick.  And perhaps the biggest lesson was not to underestimate the places close by: there's plenty to see in neighbouring counties.