Ring reading

No surprise where I headed as soon as the Juniors were dispatched this morning. I had no problem locating he fabalis Bean Geese and didn’t need to use my failsafe of checking the latest positions on my phone.

91 Beans were present with a single Pink-footed amongst them. They will not be putting much weight on for a few days as the fields are still covered in thick snow and when I had them on a field they were just sleeping and not even attempting to dig down for food. When on the river though they were looking for food along the waters edge although it didn’t look there was much to find. It has suddenly got very warm though (over 10C this afternoon) and will continue like this the rest of the week so I guess the birds are just waiting for the thaw rather than expending even more energy with a return to Denmark.

The flock contained a very high percentage of tagged birds with 16 birds noted. All four of the birds with working GPS tags were present (27, 29, 30, 10) and all tags have phoned in today confirming that I did see them ;-) In addition I read off 10 neck collars (7V, 3Y, 6Z, 6X, T8, S8, 6U,U8, 6U, 7U) identified one bird by its blue right leg ring (collar code has worn off) and had another bird with an old neck collar but where I did not with certainty see the leg ring.

It will be interesting to see how many other birds will come over the next few days and how many more rings I manage to read.

Other than the Beans there were a little over 100 Whooper Swans on the river but scattered Skylarks were the only other obvious spring migrants.

I also checked out the Aurskog-Høland area but deep snow meant no wildfowl, waders or Cranes but Skylarks had arrived here.

the geese are just visible. They were just sleeping here and making no attempt to find food

in this picture are 6X, 6Y, 7V and 6Z. All these birds have been seen in previous years

here 6Z and 6X (who are a pair) are walking past a group of sleeping collars including the GPS birds

the collar on this bird is just blank but it can be identified by its blue leg ring

Clockwise from top left: 10 & 29, 30, U8 & S8, P-f Goose with Bean, T8, 27.
27 and 29 are a pair and U8, S8 and T8 are their offspring. Tag 10 and 30 are usually seen with them and all were caught in the same net in Scotland on 9 Oct 2015. 10 and 30 may be the 2014 offspring of 27 and 29.

At around 10am the birds headed for the river. This group of 15 stayed a few more minutes before joining the rest. Maybe these birds which we know arrived yesterday were more tired than the others suggesting that the other birds had arrived earlier?

I did not manage to read 30 on the deck but this flight shot taken just after the previous photo shows the collar plus his red leg ring

resting on the River Glomma below Udenes Church

and here some Beans can just be made out on the waters edge seemingly looking for food

The valley in Aurskog Høland is still which also often has some Bean Geese is still snow covered and with no open water in the area there were no wildfowl yet

there were lots of tiny insects on the snow

and this may have been what these Skylarks (sanglerke) were eating

still winter in Maridalen and these 3 Canada Geese will have to wait a while for open water