Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT)

02/10/2008 - Braveheart and Donald make it to Scotland...

Yesterday evening there was an epic arrival of geese at WWT Caerlaverock and by this morning numbers had risen to nearly 15,000 making for a real wildlife spectacle along with the pink-footed geese, greylags and canada geese feeding on the stubbles here. A leucistic (white) barnacle goose also arrived along with a juvenile brent goose and two small Canada geese one of which is a "cackling" form rarely seen here, this bird also being seen with the barnacles on the way down the coast of Norway. From mid-afternoon yesterday we were receiving phone calls from observers on the east coast reporting flocks of many thousands of geese at great heights over places like St Abbs and Holy Island. We also received a couple of reports of 20,000 geese settled at Budle Bay near Holy Island! Sure enough the fixes from our satellite birds showed Braveheart was part of this huge wave of migrants reaching that exact bay by 18:00 yesterday, and he was still resting there this morning. This is somewhat of a record as we have not previously tracked a goose continuously from Scotland to the breeding grounds and back again over two cycles, the previous record being held by goose Sir Peter! Meanwhile, Donald left Bear Island at some point after 27th September with his tag low on charge, and was on the coast just north of Aberdeen this morning and is perhaps visiting the traditional stopover site at Loch of Strathbeg. Duff has made good progress down the coast of Norway but is currently north of Bergen at Ầlesund.

As the snow melts from the breeding sites, it seems that Braveheart has settled on the area around Svea airport on the shores of Van Mijenfjorden that he used last summer. This bird is probably still unpaired and so he is not expected to breed. Similarly Donald showed little sign of being paired and although still in the area just south of Bellsund at Dunderbukta, he is unlikely to be breeding.

Duff on the other hand was recorded with an unringed bird on the wintering grounds some of the time and so he may be trying to breed on a rocky peninsula on the coast of Nordenskiöldkysten between Båtodden and Stabbelva, sites at which we caught geese with families during an expedition last summer. He has moved very little this week having visited various breeding islands in that area after arrival.

As we have seen for the barnacle geese in the past e.g. with Sir Peter, when the geese settle down to breed their GPS fixes change very little, and currently for comparison, all four male Greenland barnacle geese have moved very little over the last week or two and are probably settled with their mates on breeding cliffs in north-east Greenland. Any birds which breed successfully should only make brief forays to nearby areas to feed as incubation progresses for almost a month.

The only Svalbard barnacle out of those tagged which is definitely paired is Thor, and of course he had four young with him throughout the winter and possibly during the spring migration. This may be the reason for his late departure and why he is currently still stuck in Norway at the northerly staging site of Vesterålen. Wind conditions still do not look good for departure from there to Svalbard this week and thus it is highly unlikely this bird will attempt to breed this year.

Lynvingen's tag has failed to upload on the last three occasions now and so we must assume that either something happened to him or his tag at some point after his last GPS fix on Rockcliffe Marsh on the morning of 29th May. What we know from observations of the behaviour of the geese at that time and counts that day and two days later is that 1,300 geese are highly likely to have departed in the evening of 29th May after 20:00 (with 2 geese remaining on 31st). If he followed the route usually taken by the geese out over the North Sea at the rate they usually travel then in the words of a weather expert: "Low pressure was over the region, so there were heavy showers - some possibly with thunder. He may have been encouraged to 'give it a go' by a light south to southwesterly wind at Rockcliffe Marsh. But out over the east coast he would soon have had to battle against an east to northeasterly wind of 8 to 10 m/s. Once he made it to the Norweigian coast he would have had no problems - the winds would have eased right down."

Thus it may be that Lynvingen (Wings of Lightning) perished in a storm in his bid to reach Svalbard and again, as in previous years, the decision to leave the Solway late came at a cost.

By the afternoon of the 28th, Duff had moved a few miles north and was feeding alongside Donald on the shoreline and faster thawing south-west facing slopes on the north side of Dunderbukta (see attached map: Donald = red; Duff = yellow).

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Lynvingen was on the muds to the north-west of Rockcliffe Marsh from 05:00 to 09:00 this morning, a typical position for birds thinking of migrating, surely now he will take advantage of the shift in the wind from easterly to south-westerly.

Thor remains in Helgeland, perhaps taking it slower because he still has last year's goslings in tow.

Although unfortunately not one of this year's Top Geese, Braveheart has just completed an epic journey.

On the evening of 19th, he left Rockcliffe Marsh at about 18:00 and was passing over Edinburgh by 20:00. On the morning of 21st he was parallel with Thor at Helgeland, but unlike this bird Braveheart did not stop, he continued on far to the north, past Vesterålen where the other geese have staged for a couple of weeks, and continued out over the Barents Sea, navigating his way directly to Bear Island in what was virtually a non-stop journey which must have taken a fair amount of fuel.

A tremendous feat of navigation as Bear Island is a bit of rock only 15 by 20km, and usually the geese only visit this on the way south in September. Of further interest when looking at http://www.wwt.org.uk/research/tracking/maps.asp is the complete contrast with the timings and route taken by Braveheart last spring, when he did not visit Rockcliffe Marsh, left Scotland via Aberdeen, and spent a couple of weeks in Norway and moved north without the visit to Bear Island.

These have been a busy 24 hours for the barnacle geese. Yesterday afternoon it was still possible to count 7,000 barnacle geese (including two leucistic/white birds) on Rockcliffe Marsh at the eastern end of the Solway, and with the slight north-easterly winds the birds seemed to be making test flights in flocks of a hundred or so to the mouth of the River Esk, heading into the wind and then returning back to the marsh. By 20:00 that evening I was getting texts from Steve Cooper, warden at WWT Caerlaverock, saying he was getting skeins of 100-200 geese passing overhead at his house on the upland moors of Langholm, the birds heading north-east. Between that time and 08:00 this morning he was getting birds going over, at least 2,000 in total.

The tagged birds highlight this movement with data coming in on Thor right now showing his move across the North Sea this morning; he was just 50 miles from Stavangar and the tip of Norway by 09:00 and turning to head up the coast. Unfortunately Braveheart's tag uploaded just before this movement and so we will have to wait another four days to see if he has joined the migration, and Lynvingen should upload tomorrow. At the same time, Duff has moved to Svalbard from Vesterålen (having spent 18 days fattening up in Norway as compared with 12 days for Donald). He crossed the 500 miles of ocean in one go in about 20 hours, stopping just five miles out from the southern tip of Spitsbergen. By 08:00 he was at the traditional pre-breeding area on the north side of Hornsund. During the last few days Donald has had to retreat south a bit, no doubt due to the snow conditions, and is still feeding very close to the shoreline where there will no doubt be some slim pickings available.