News in from Simon in Oslo and confirmation of our tagged bird shows that a further move north to Braskeridfoss has now been made. According to Simon this is one week earlier than ever before. He saw them for the last time on Friday when a count of 87 birds which is the highest count recently but a record low count.
Simon Rix the Oslo birder has been out and located the bean geese on one of their usual fields north of Oslo.
Simon has updated his blog to reflect this and has some nice shots for you to look at. I recommend you to log onto oslobirder.blogspot.com and enjoy his photographs. Particularly Tag05 and its mate V8.
I attach a location map showing the feeding area in the north and the usual roost site on the Glomma River to the south.
Tag05 left northern Denmark just after 0900 this morning and flew direct to north east of Oslo by around 1400hrs. See below.
We have received information from Dan Mangsbro in Sweden that a flock of taiga bean geese have been seen at Lake Brosjon. That is the place which we visited in the autumn and saw our birds on their autumn migration south.
Dan has reported a flock of 104 birds being seen now at Lake Brosjon. He was able to identify X3 and leg rings Y4 including a blue leg ring with no code.
X3 and Y4 are birds believed to be short stopping in Denmark and not coming back to Slamannan now.
I attach a picture of the latest information on tag5 which has been at Pandrup. It has recently been roosting in the sea as you can see from the picture.
I have checked today the 23rd February but cannot get an up to date fix on Tag5.
A movement took place yesterday commencing at 0930 with a flock of bean geese leaving Slamannan for Denmark.
This flight was recorded thanks to the GPS tracker on Tag5 which has given us superb information on the detail of the movement.
It is likely that previous movements of geese had taken place this spring but unrecorded due to lack of Tags on birds.
See attachment below of flight information.
The bean goose flock have managed to survive the varied weather that we have had this winter. The cold spells with much frost on the ground did not upset them in any way. Always managing to find grass with exploiting woodland edges. During extreme frost they as usual spent some nights sitting on their feeding areas rather than fly to ice covered ponds. Fortunately one of the preferred roost lochs is quite deep and often contains open water at these times.
In recent weeks a flock of c200 Pinkfeet have been in the same area as our bean goose flock which has often made identification awkward depending on the amount of sunshine and which direction it is coming from when looking through binoculars or telescopes.
We hope to have our flock of around 150 or so birds for a week or two more before they depart to their breeding grounds in Sweden.
We have had a variety of visitors from the south this winter and have managed on occasions to escort some of them when they have arrived at Slamannan.
We had a nice visit from Ashley Cooper from the Lake District who had come to photograph the 'Beans' for a new book on British birds.
Ashley is probably better known for a book he published in November 2016 titled 'Images from a warming planet'.
This is a book about change. About the way that the climate is already changing and the way it will
change even more dramatically in the future. Well worth a read for anyone interested in the natural world. ISBN 978-1-5262-0952-6.
I attach a lovely shot of a small group of bean geese that flew over our heads when out on the plateau. Photo courtesy of Ashley.
We now have received an update from Tag5 and it shows in depth the migration flight path from near Oslo to Slamannan on 27/28th September 2024.
The map below shows the complete route, below is the detail it gave us. Total flight time was 21.5 hrs.The birds left a roost lake c30miles SW of Oslo at 0400 on the 27th.As tag5 neared to east coast it had been flying at 110kph but then dropped to 60-70 and always travelled just at wave height or up to 40m or so above. Came ashore at Whitby and then up country towards Keilder and then home to Fannyside Muir at 0130 on the 28th. There was a little pause at Burnhope Reservoir in Pennines for 30mins at 1900.
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