Visitors from the arctic

I'm looking forward to seeing what wetland birds the winter blows in to the Hull Valley. Visitors from the arctic frequently include pink-footed, barnacle and white-fronted geese and whooper swans. The resident greylags and canadas at Hornsea Mere are habituated to flock to any human being appearing with a plastic bag. I noticed a solitary barnacle goose among some resident geese last year and was amused to watch it carry on grazing oblivious as all its companions charged furiously towards a visitor who stepped into their midst to feed them. Clearly this wild northerner hadn't learnt what comes out of plastic bags. Actually this behaviour can get quite annoying at the Mere as the birds appear the minute you stop your car and some are very persistent, like this swan who had a good look at us through the car window.

It's good to see that the bitterns are back at both Hornsea Mere and Tophill. Two of my favourite ducks, the red breasted merganser and the goosander, have also been in evidence. The merganser has a delightfully adolescent spiky hairdo. The male goosander is truly beautiful bird with a bottle green head, crimson bill and sleek white body flushed with salmon pink. We saw both at Tophill last year but unfortunately too far away to get good pictures.

This super little family made lovely end to a fantastic week of wildlife in Skye last year, however. It was pouring with rain, getting darker all the time and seeming like it was time to turn in for the night, when along came this adult with seven babies - each with a miniature version of the distinctive sawtoothed bill. I would love to see goosanders with chicks as they have a very endearing habit of letting them ride 'piggy back' - sometimes the whole brood struggling to get on board at once!