After this date the farmer at Luckenburn had to spread dung on his fields which resulted in the birds moving away to the east nearer Slamannan.
A flock of possibly up to 180 birds was seen on the 10 October in a oat stubble field on the main road from Slamannan to Falkirk.
As the birds had used this field on several occasions around this time we attempted to catch a small number of birds but were unlucky and the birds did not cooperate. However we hope to try again before too long if a suitable location can be found.
The use of the oat stubble was interesting as recently we had a visiting ornithologist from Umea in north east Sweden who also studies a flock of taiga bean geese. In his area such stubble fields are used extensively by bean geese and he commented that it would be interesting if our 'beans' do the same thing this winter. We now know that to be the case and this scenario may well assist our wintering birds. (picture below of birds in the stubble field)
