Our two flocks of Taiga Bean Geese are still on schedule for their migration to Dalarna County in Sweden where they breed.
The flock in Sweden are still in the area near Saffle with roosting taking place at Lake Brosjon
The other flock are still in Norway but have moved from Akershus to the Glomma River beside Braskereidfoss.
All of our GPS trackers are working which is great news, we await further movements north in due course.
Simon had been out birding on his patch as usual and has photographed some lovely birds for you to enjoy.
He has also managed to find our flock of bean geese and has photographs of them on his blog.
Our tracking website is not working at present and we are hoping it will come back online sooner rather than later.
Visit Simon's blog at (oslobirder.blogspot.com) for a treat in the birds that he has been seeing lately.
We have received further information from Dan at Lake Brosjon in Sweden and from Simon in Norway about our two flocks of Taiga Bean Geese.
At Lake Brosjon Dan has located a flock numbering 121 birds including one with a blue colour ring on its left leg. This bird was caught at Slamannan in 2012 and and was identified as a male. A UHF collar was fitted at that time with the number 16 on it. This collar has been lost in the intervening period but great to hear that the bird is still alive though the last two years it has not been seen at Slamannan. so probably has decided to winter in Denmark like tags 39 & 20. We are grateful to Dan for his observations.
In Norway Simon has been busy too and reports from the Glomma River where he has confirmed a flock size of 110 birds. This early arrival at Akershus is a sign of earlier migration and although not much snow on the ground food may be scarce. Time will tell, as they sometimes go back to Pandrup in Denmark if food is unavailable.
Simon has updated his blog and is well worth looking at since he has downloaded a series of shots of the bean geese on his patch. (oslobirder.blogspot.com) Our thanks too to Simon for his dedicated fieldwork.
This total of 231 birds is very close to our wintering flock size here at Slamannan although at one stage we did think we had that total present. This was never confirmed.
Fresh news in today indicates that the birds have left Pandrup and are now in their staging posts in Sweden (Lake Brosjon) and Norway (Glomma River NE of Oslo)
See attached map for details:
We have put together some more pictures of night activity at a roost pond. This behaviour has been unknown to us for nearly 30 years and is very interesting into how the birds bath and preen during the hours of darkness at their roost sites. Click on the following link to see it. View the bean geese at their night time roost.
I attach a screen grab of some of our birds on their staging grounds in Denmark. Fascinating to see how they can find each other after having flown across the North Sea the other day
Two of our GPS tag birds have now flown to Pandrup Denmark on or around 30 January.
In the last two days only one flock of 26/30 birds have been seen on the plateau. It looks like most of the flock have gone.
A full month earlier than 20 odd years ago.
Hopefully we will get some information from the birders in Denmark on how many birds have arrived at their staging post in northern Denmark..
