SPOTTED!
Wildlife in (and around) Hailsham
by Tim Fox
I’d not been on a wild goose chase before the first Saturday of 2021 but reports of White-fronted geese on nearby Pevensey Levels piqued my interest and so, with wellies attached, I set out alone for a “short”, Tier-4 permissible, recreational walk. Two miles and several hundred metres of muddy, motorbike churned-up, bridleway later, and the flock came into view. Watched by nearby Canada geese (dark brown body and black necks & heads), the similar sized but lighter coloured, White-fronted geese were walking slowly across a field, grazing the grass as they moved (geese do prefer eating grass to bread!). Their name suggests that they have a white front but this refers only to the small white patch on their forehead (borne out by their scientific name anser albifrons, with albi meaning white and frons meaning forehead. This white patch aside, they could quite easily be mistaken for another of our regular geese species, Greylag, which can sometimes be seen associating with the Canada geese around the Common Pond. What makes white-fronts a special species is that most years, only one or two arrive on the Levels, if any at all – this year there are a couple of hundred, with the flock I saw numbering about 130. They have flown quite a distance to get here having spent the summer breeding in the Arctic tundra in Russia and flying south normally to Belgium, Netherlands and Germany to escape the 24-hour night and freezing conditions. Usually, we only see such high numbers in Sussex when weather is bad on continental Europe but, at time of writing, both Europe and UK are relatively mild, so the reason for their presence in such high number remains a mystery. They do tend to travel around in a flock and so, if you are out-and-about in town and see a large V-shaped flock of cackling / honking birds overhead, they could very well be our rare visitors. Alas, they are quite timid and thus extremely unlikely to turn up on the Common Pond.
Tim can be found most Saturday mornings gracing the airwaves with Pat Bradley on 95.9 Hailsham FM, discussing local happenings between 8 and 10am.
Image: European White-fronted goose
