Fresh news update by Dan yesterday.
On a visit to Lake Brosjon he recorded a taiga bean goose flock of 220 birds. He also identified V6 and a partner and leg ring Y4 also with a partner.
This is a very good total of birds and many thanks to Dan for his observations.
Fresh news in today from Dan who has been out looking for Taiga Bean Geese at Brosjon. He recorded 33 birds on 8 March and on the 14th the flock total had risen to 137. No collars or leg rings were seen.
Thanks to Dan for his work in looking for our birds on their spring migration and reporting his findings to us.
We have had confirmation from Simon Rix that he has been out looking for our bean geese and has managed to take some super pictures and movie film of our birds on his patch.
It is all available to see on Simon's blog, see Oslobirder.blogspot.com
I can recommend viewing it if you follow or are interested in the Taiga Bean Geese that winter near Falkirk.
We have changed the format of our annual reports and we now have available the 24/25 report available at
https://sites.google.com/view/scotlands-bean-geese/home
This is a simplified report than previous but contains all the facts of the winter period which is of interest to birders that follow this species in the UK.
Angus
We discovered within the last few days that bean geese had turned up at one of their roost pools on the plateau.
Billy Thomson and I went out today and low and behold found a flock of 88 birds including V8, one of our birds that has a collar on it.
It would seem to us that the flock had left us when we thought, but ran into the bad weather in the north sea and diverted somewhere out at sea or on land, then decided to return to Slamannan and await another weather window.
This behaviour had been noted some years ago when a family group of birds landed in Orkney,then the next day flew to Caithness, and then next day to Slamannan. They later awaited better weather before they eventually moved to Denmark.
It has been rather a difficult winter this year in trying to monitor our flock. Local disturbance by one landowner, and poor weather made observations difficult. With no live tagged birds to monitor it was down to visual monitoring by our small team of observers. Field usage by our birds was not normal this winter and certainly different from recent winters.
We had hoped to catch some birds this winter but our plan to receive tags did not occur. Hopefully we will be in a better position next winter.
We reckoned that our flock total this winter was 170 geese, not too dissimilar to last year. Counting juveniles within the flock was nigh impossible but one of our collared birds V8 had three juveniles in tow and another bird V6 also appeared to have three juveniles.
Another interesting scenario this winter was the report of Taiga Bean Geese being seen in several locations around the UK.
4 birds were reported from North Ronaldsay, 15 birds were reported at Deerness Orkney and other reports of a few birds in Northern Ireland.
170 birds were reported on 13 January 2026, and several days later on the 17th this flock size had reduced to 87 birds. Numbers gradually reduced to 70 then, 13 on 20th Jan, 14 on 23rd Jan and finally 3 on 26th January.
No bean geese have been seen so far in early February, but it is likely we will continue to check for any stragglers left behind. Weather conditions on the plateau had improved somewhat which made the birds move east but weather conditions on the North Sea would provide a stern test of their fitness to migrate. Strong easterly/south easterly winds were prevalent at this time as well as lower temperatures in Denmark.
It has been an interesting winter so far with our birds once they arrived at Slamannan not showing themselves to us in many of their usual feeding sites.
This was thought to be due to disturbance by farming activities in these usual haunts. However for the past few weeks things have settled down and the birds having been showing themselves quite well which is allowing us to view them and identify individuals with neck collars.
At present we have counted a flock total of about 175 birds which is a similar size to recent winters.
Sadly our last working GPS collar (Tag5) (female) stopped working, a while after it appeared to successfully breed with its mate V8 (male). This bird (V8) was seen in Norway during its migration south with 3 juveniles in attendance and is now here at Slamannan along with collar V6 who has a partner and 2 juveniles. Our count of juveniles is continuing at present and we hope to have a better figure by the end of the year.
It has been an interesting autumn (26th November) for Taiga Bean Geese being seen in other areas of Scotland and Ireland. A total of 45 birds have been reported from places like Orkney, Caithness and Ireland. This is very unusual and not been apparent in winters past.
We have not been in a position to catch and ring any birds so far this winter, but we are hopeful that we will be in a position to achieve this by the end of the year.