They spend winter in estuaries and shallow coasts with mudflats, also grazing on … Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland hosts over 75% of the population of the geese during the late autumn and is now the most important site for this species outside the breeding season. The fact that such a high proportion of the flyway population gathers together at a single site in autumn also renders the geese potentially significantly vulnerable to a major problem with their main food source there (eel-grass), and to contagious disease. Eelgrass (or Zostera) is a seagrass that’s one of the only marine flowering plants in the world. The difference is important, because subspecies migrate to different places. Up to 150 can be observed in Jersey, concentrated in St. Aubin’s Bay (look out for them at West Park or by St Aubin’s Harbour), but only a handful has been recorded in the other islands. Our Brent geese are the dark bellied species. The nest is bowl-shaped, lined with grass and down, in an elevated location, often near a small pond. In the years in which lemming numbers are low, foxes and other predators turn to eating small birds, especially goslings. This was particularly evident after summer 2013, when birds returned to the wintering areas with virtually no young. The brant and the similar barnacle goose were previously considered one species, formerly believed to be the same creature as the crustacean. A fourth form (known variously as gray brant, intermediate brant, or grey-bellied brent goose) has been proposed, although no formal subspecies description has been made as yet, for a population of birds breeding in central Arctic Canada (mainly Melville Island), and wintering on Puget Sound on the American west coast around the U.S./Canada border. Scientific name: Branta bernicla. Brent geese – VIP guests in the Channel Islands. [13] In recent decades, it has started using agricultural land a short distance inland, feeding extensively on grass and winter-sown cereals. The brent goose flies to the UK for the milder winter. The brant goose was strictly coastal bird in winter, rarely leaving tidal estuaries, where it feeds on eelgrass (Zostera marina) and the seaweed, sea lettuce (Ulva). This year again, very few young birds have been seen in Jersey while, in contrast, the dark-bellied birds appear to have had a very good year. The few that survived changed their diet to include sea lettuce until the eelgrass eventually began to return. They fly over in V formation most evenings and sometimes back again, honking gloriously. It has been suggested that they learnt this behaviour by following other species of geese. Over recent years, many geese have been given coloured plastic rings by researchers that are easy for birdwatchers to see allowing us to keep an eye on the birds’ activities. The Brent Geese have arrived in Christchurch Harbour; a time for celebration. However, despite spending around eight months with us, how much do we really know about these little, approachable geese? Sometimes, they have to land and waddle over the ice for a bit before setting off again.
When they arrive in Jersey, the geese have undertaken an amazing annual migration, travelling from the breeding grounds over the Greenland Ice-cap, then staging in western Iceland before an onward flight to Ireland, where an amazing 75% of birds gather initially at a single site, Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland.
The first goose, like the first salmon, seal, or eggs in spring, were emblematic of the turning of the seasons. It’s the light-bellied brent goose: arguably the toughest bird on the British Isles. Even once back, there’s no let up. The resightings of the pale-bellieds further demonstrate just how site-faithful these geese can be. They’re as little as 500km from the North Pole, about as far north as it’s possible to go, polar bear-dodging as they nest on bare rock and shingle. The book highlights how a small area of Dorset and Wiltshire played a significant role in the creation of Stonehenge and the first common culture or civilisation in Britain, then fell into agrarian decline only to re-emerge as a retirement hotspot; Avonlands became picturesque for the affluent pensioner. [7] In Ireland it is recorded in winter from a number areas including Lough Foyle, Strangford Lough, Tralee Bay and Castlemaine Harbour.[8][9][10]. On their breeding grounds, the geese are nearly impossible to get near, yet in Dublin, they’re so tame you could almost pick one up. The pale-bellied brant appears blackish-brown and light grey in colour. My favourite food is eelgrass, which grows in the sea. I moved to Christchurch, Dorset in 2012 to join the oldest population in the UK. When the eelgrass runs out I move onto fields to eat the grass. The Leigh brent geese come from Siberia, northern Russia, over 2,500 miles away and hundreds of miles within the Arctic Circle. It breeds on the Arctic coasts of central and western Siberia and winters in western Europe, with over half the population in southern England, the rest between northern Germany and north-western France. I really love your blog bits, they always have just the right amount of information, presented in such a readable way! Pale-bellied brent geese (Branta bernicla hrota), the other brent goose present in the Channel Islands over the winter, arrive rather later, in November each year, and are much less numerous. The latter population, to which our birds have been shown to belong, currently numbers around 40,000 birds, and has been subject to intensive study by the Irish Brent Goose Research Group and their Icelandic collaborators. The brant, or brent goose (Branta bernicla), is a small goose of the genus Branta. Checking this on Google, one site says they do not fly in formation, another that they do. The main reason that these geese come to our shores is because there are beds of the highly vulnerable eel-grass, one of the birds’ most important food sources here. Birds in families or even big groups of ‘friends’ tend to do better than single birds, because there are more eyes to watch for danger.
Brent geese are small, like a large duck, and dark, mostly black, with a white bum. The geese favour eelgrass because both its stems and rhizomes are highly nutritious, especially the latter, which contain many water-soluble carbohydrates that are easy to digest. [14] That myth can be dated back to at least the 12th century. During the 1930s, a disease almost wiped out the population of eelgrass in Ireland. You can see me "bottoms-up" in the water feeding on this tasty plant just like a duck. Now, the threats to eelgrass come mainly from human activity, and seagrasses such as Zostera have declined 10% per decade since 1970 (IBPES 2019). It grows on intertidal sand in ‘meadows’; these are submerged much of the time by the tide. Read about our approach to external linking. This goose nests in the Canadian High Arctic, possibly further north than any other bird on the planet. Photo: Stewart Luck . For one thing, how many Channel Islanders actually know that our islands are almost unique in annually hosting populations of two very distinctly different brent geese? Only then can they make it back. Pale-bellied brent geese breed mostly in Canada and Greenland and spend the winter mostly in Ireland. The first Brent records of 2019 came at the end of August, which isn’t actually unusual, though the bulk of birds arrived several weeks later (and are still coming!). Juvenile upper-wings have a barred appearance when the bird is at rest, compared with the more uniform back of adults. These, as their name suggests, and as can be seen in the photographs, have much paler bellies than their Russian counterparts. There is another factor that would have influenced the geese spreading into urban areas originally. This behavior is called ‘context dependent wariness’, where they recognise that arctic foxes represent a different threat level to a friendly Irish person. Dark-bellied brent geese breed in northern Russia and spend the winter in southern and eastern England. Birds with less developed social networks spend more time walking around or looking up, when they would rather concentrate on feeding. Here, they can replenish their energy. This might have been catastrophic for the light-bellied brent goose: instead, they managed to adapt to saltmarsh, estuarine plants, and managed grasslands. This is really an interesting account of these geese, and their significance to Jersey. Brent geese winter wildlife spectacle WWT Castle Espie Wetland Centre. Brent geese tend to congregate, often in very large flocks, during passage and the winter. Probably not a Dublin park, but that’s exactly what happens every winter when thousands of little geese descend. The birds live for up to 30 years so a poor breeding year or two might not matter. Gerald of Wales claimed to have seen these birds hanging down from pieces of timber, William Turner accepted the theory, and John Gerard claimed to have seen the birds emerging from their shells. It is often hard to imagine that the calm little geese we see in winter are the same birds that disperse across a hostile arctic wilderness each spring. Whilst the numbers of geese in this population have approximately doubled over the past 10-15 years, they can experience low reproduction in years when conditions in the arctic are inclement, as the suitable weather window of time for successful breeding can be very narrow.
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