Back in November, the BOURC decreed that Ross's Goose was now accepted fully onto the British List. This was on the basis of re-revaluating historical records and concluding that one in Lancs. over three consecutive winters between 1970 and 1974 was coincident with a rapid population expansion for this species in the Nearctic, and that there is clear precedent for Nearctic wildfowl trans-Atlantic vagrancy.
Clearly this generated a lot of excitement in the birding community on Twitter - an armchair tick loomed, and for a good many of those the expectation was that a first-winter bird at Wighton in Norfolk in November 2001 would subsequently make the grade when re-assessed by the BBRC. Here's a screenshot from this webpage on Birdguides (from 2004 as far as I can see) which includes a photo of the said bird:
I saw that bird too, but as with many such sightings of 'untickable' species it isn't in my records. I needed to dig about in the loft, find my old notebooks and check the date. I also don't really remember much from around that time due to life events that happened a couple of months before and a month afterwards: I was working in aerospace engineering when the Twin Towers were destroyed, with an immediate impact on work contracts and exports, and then two days before Christmas my Dad was killed in a car crash. 2001 started so brightly with my eldest son Josh being born and ended up a complete shitstorm (with the Foot and Mouth disaster thrown in).
Anyway, I finally got around to digging out the old notebooks tonight and indeed found the detail I was hoping for.
Around the same time as the Goose turned up, there was an oiled first-winter Snowy Owl dossing about Felixstowe docks. I'd already been over to try and see that on a weekday evening but failed, so on Sat 17/11/2001 I headed back over there with John Hague in tow. We duly saw the bird, which was unmemorable but far from the majestic beast that you regularly see delivering post to Harry Potter on the telly. From there we headed across East Anglia to Wighton and watched the skanky-looking dwarf snow goose feeding with Pink-footed Geese. Then on to Titchwell to round off the day, where amongst a decent list of waders, wildfowl and raptors we also saw a first-winter Gull-billed Tern. Basically it was a day of unsustainable road usage looking at first-winter birds that should be more white than they were, most of which I'd completely forgotten about until reading my barely legible childish scribble.
I saw this bird just over twenty years before the species was added to the British List; I'll hold fire on adding it to mine until the 2001 Norfolk individual has been declared 'good'. In the meantime, I fully expect that the only other Ross's Goose that I've seen will continue to be declared a plastic bag of ....
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