First winter

R and I had booked a block of time this afternoon to check each other's tax returns before submitting them. It was also forecast to rain later in the day. These two facts were depressing enough for us to feel the need to pre-reward ourselves with cake, so shortly after breakfast we headed into Stratford. It was warm and reasonably bright, but there were no dragons to be seen around Lucy's Mill Bridge, so as I headed along the south bank of the river towards town I kept a sharp eye out for birds, and was more than happy when I spotted the three long-staying local Goosanders close to the chain ferry dock.

Most books and web sites will tell you that it's very difficult to distinguish between a female Goosander, a male in eclipse, and a juvenile: allegedly they all look the same. But if you dig deeper, there are differences - for instance, adult birds have black tips to their bills, juveniles have white markings on their faces as well as the white throat they share with the adults, and males, even in eclipse, have a larger patch of white wing feathers than females. 

Having carefully examined all of my photos from today, I'm now pretty confident that all three of the Stratford birds are juveniles, and I think there are probably two males and one female. I thought at the time, and still do now, that the individual I posted last month was a female, but I believe that this one is a male - you can see that he has a much more obvious white wing patch than she does. He's losing the white facial stripe that the other two birds still have, but traces of it remain, and his bill is still pale-tipped like theirs.

It will be interesting to see how long this trio remain in Stratford. In theory they could stay for a full twelve months, because there are plenty of fish for them to hunt, and as they won't be breeding next spring they'll have no need to move to the upland waters that British Goosanders favour as breeding grounds. Despite this though, I think it's unlikely that they will settle - as this feature makes clear, these are fully wild birds that have no use for humans, and Stratford, with all its tourists and river craft, is surely too busy for their comfort. This stretch of river is also used by a lot of anglers, and fishermen and Goosanders don't always coexist easily.