Needle in a haystack!

Last week, I was in Opole, in south-western Poland, for three days with the main target of seeing my lifer Taiga Bean Goose.  Ten years ago, I was looking at a flock of Bean Geese in The Netherlands when a friend thought he had found a Taiga amongst the many Tundras but, just as I looked through his telescope, a helicopter flew over putting the whole flock into the air.  Taiga Bean Goose has, therefore, been a very frustrating gap on my lifelist ever since, especially as we went on to produce the first documented record of Tundra Bean Goose for Norway, where Taiga Bean is relatively common!
My first morning in Opole started well with this female Syrian Woodpecker, a scarce bird for the region and Poland as a whole, right outside where I was staying.  We then moved on to Turawski Reservoir, where the first birds I found where a couple of White-tailed Eagles.  We ended up counting no less than seven of them dotted around the edge of the huge reservoir, before moving to a gull roost which held around 500 Caspians plus the odd Herring and Yellow-legged, giving me some good practice at large-gull identification.  Day two was goose day and a call from a local birder near Gliwice confirming the presence of geese saw us arrive at Pławniowice Reservoir to be greeted by the below sight.

The dark blob is actually thousands of Bean Geese (we estimated 4500) packed tightly together but excitment soon turned to despair when I realised they were mostly Tundras plus a few White-fronted.  The three of us thus started searching through the flock and, on my first look through the telescope, I picked out a Barnacle Goose, much to the delight of my companions as this is another rare bird for the area.  It took us almost two hours but I eventually found just two Taiga Bean Geese, picked out by the orange on the bill extending all the way to its base and confirmed by bill shape and neck colouration.  The others all had a look and agreed I had found my taiga needle in the tundra haystack!  From there, we relocated to another, larger reservoir at about the same time as most of the geese so that we ended up watching a huge flock of around 10,000 geese, most of which were Tundras; a truly amazing sight and sound.  Back in Opole, my lucky streak continued as I went on to find an extremely late Chiffchaff while the others were busy photographing the Syrian Woodpecker.  On the third and final day, however, we woke to thick, freezing fog and so only got to see a mixed group of europaeus and caudatus Long-tailed Tits before heading back to the gull roost and impressing myself by picking out a Yellow-legged Gull from the many Caspians, proving I had actually learnt something during my gull masterclass of the first afternoon.