Monday 14th November: Goosander

Today has been dull and gloomy all day and so it was pretty dark by the time I came down to the Meadow for the evening roost. The poor conditions meant that there were hardly any people visiting the Meadow and as a consequence the gull roost was much larger than of late. The golden plover flock numbered about 300 birds and the wigeon, teal and a few shoveler were all present and correct though the two redshank seemed to have moved on. The gulls were much more widely distributed this evening with the largest ones in the North Channel, a large swathe of mostly black-headed along the North Reach and a smaller number of again mostly black-headed in Burgess Channel. There were no gulls of particular note this evening with just one adult common gull spotted and relatively few larger gulls about in general. The bird of the day was the first GOOSANDER, a red-head, of the season which was presumably going to roost on the floods.

The red-head goosander this evening.
It looks like a female to me but I don't know whether
goosander have a first winter plumage or not.