In recent days two of our birds (39 & 20) who have wintered in Denmark for the past two years have now moved north to Saffle in Sweden.
Today it is noted that another two birds ringed on 5 November 2022 (Tags 5 & 6) have also left Pandrup in Denmark and have landed in Norway.
With new informative tags being used we have gained further knowledge about how our birds migrate (Speed of flight and height flown over land and sea) All fascinating information. See attached map for flight data.
Another winter season has now ended, much earlier than we expected. Following the migration of Tag6 and others who would have been on the same migration, numbers of bean geese declined sharply. With around 300 Pinkfeet still in the area it was no easy task to try and pin down the Bean Geese that may still be present.
57 Bean Geese were seen on the 22nd January but the following day only approximately 40 could be counted.
Thereafter, I and fellow colleagues have not seen any.
Our birds are now safely in Denmark near Pandrup where they will stage before splitting up into their two flocks for the next move, either into Norway or Sweden.
Our recently fitted neck collars are giving us so much more information than previous ones. I attach the flight from Slamannan to Pandrup Denmark of this bird which shows the exact flight details with a 5 min break between signals.
The flight was completed in 7 Hrs at a pace of 80-110KPH, which is a phenomenal speed, but with a tail wind probably easier than we think.
It was noted this morning that one of our newly tagged birds left Scotland this morning and at 0800 was off the east coast near Dunbar heading for Denmark. See screen grab shot from tracking data. It is more than likely that a flock of our birds have gone too. By lunchtime today only 43 bean geese had been seen just to the north of Slamannan. We hope to get an update from birds in the air later when I will be able to update you on Migration information.
I also promised a few shots taken at one of the main roosting ponds this winter. Attached below.
Night roost pics
May I wish all blog watchers a happy new year wherever you are.
It has been a difficult winter this year in trying to count the bean geese flock in part due to inclement weather, light and a large flock of Pinkfeet that have been feeding with and alongside the beans.
If the light is not good Pinkfeet and the birds distant, it can be quite easy to confuse the two species.
However we reckon we have about 200 taiga bean geese present since October and still with us, time though is running out as we expect some birds to be gone by early February.
We have managed to use a trail camera this winter to get night shots of the geese in and around one of their roosting pools.
This has been very interesting exercise and I hope to be able to send you some stills or videos before too long.
Since fitting three new collars on our bean geese on the evening of the 5th November a great amount of information is now being made available into the distribution of our birds in and around Slamannan. I attach a picture of the distribution of our birds since then.
After a couple of unsuccessful years in trying to catch some more bean geese it is great to tell you that we managed to catch and ring 7 Bean Geese on 5th November. Collars have been fitted to all birds with 3 birds having GPS collars fitted which will give us more information on their travels both here and during their migration to Scandanavia.
The new collars to look out for are: V7, V8, X3, X4, GPS birds are numbered 5, 6 and 7
One of the birds caught was a retrap with the original catch being made on 2012 and given the collar 7, which it managed to lose. It is fortunate that this bird had been given a black ring on its left leg which has allowed us to identify it since then. It has now been fitted with the new collar X4. (see pics below)
Of interest is the face pattern of this bird seems to have changed over the years which is an interesting feature worthy of note
