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.
