A few weeks ago, my family and I were having a bit of a picnic in the car at Lopwell Dam, which isn’t too far away from us. We go there quite often as it is a lovely place to park up and you always see birds there – usually Canada Geese, Shelducks, Swans, Shags, Cormorants and various other birds.
During this visit, we were scanning around with out binoculars and saw a large bird on the other side of the Dam, chasing around after some Swans. We couldn’t make out exactly what it was, but after looking at our bird book that we keep in the car for such occasions, the closest match we could find was a Greylag Goose (see picture below from the RSPB website).
We thought this was quite strange as this breed of Goose isn’t meant to be down this end of the country (Plymouth, Devon), so perhaps it was a pet that had escaped! The only part of its description that did make sense was that the Greylag Goose often mixes with Canada Geese, and at Lopwell Dam, there are often lots of Canada Geese. So perhaps this bird got caught up with them at some point and travelled down to the Dam with them! They also tend to be around lakes and reservoirs, which would again fit in with Lopwell Dam being the perfect location for it as the area above the Dam is fairly like a lake as it can be extremely calm, especially after good weather.
I would be interested to know if anyone else in the Plymouth region has seen this bird around, and if anyone can confirm that it has arrived locally?
If you do have some information, please add a comment to this post or tweet me on @strethewey using #greylaggoose.
Thanks in advance!