Enjoying the addictions

Having two addictions to feed is not easy but if the birds play ball then you can live with your habits for a short while at least.

The Beans did play ball today but left me scratching my head because I saw the (whole) Taiga flock on the same field as Tuesday’s confusing birds…were they really Tundra as I eventually concluded?

My dose of GG this afternoon was impeccable with everything as it should be except for the skills and patience of the photographer who failed to digitally record the hit as well as it deserved – more to come on this in a later post.

I had not intended to get high on Beans today but a check of the GPS map at the breakfast table showed a bird on the same field as Tuesday’s “Tundras”. I had to follow up on this and when I arrived 2 unringed Beans were with 40 Whoopers. They looked like Taigas but my confidence levels were not high. I went looking for the rest of the flock and saw 5 birds flying away from an area I intended to check and towards where I had come from. I did a U-turn and found the 5 on the field with the swans and the other 2 Beans. The 5 new geese were definitely Taigas and there were no obvious size or jizz differences to the original 2 so that made 7 Taigas and no Tundras. Shortly after the rest of the flock arrived in a few groups and landed at about 200m range which is close for these birds – and all birds looked to be straighforward Taiga’s (as far as I know it is extremely rare that Tundra and Taiga mix). I read 9 collars (all that were present) which were the same 7 I had seen on Monday (27, 18, S8, 3Y, 7V, 7U, 04) plus another two (T8 & 24) which had been part of a flock of 8 birds that had spent a few days at Borrevannet in Vestfold. The flock spooked after a while allowing me to count exactly 140 birds from flight photos. 138 flew off north whilst 2 stayed with the Whoopers (these 2 looking to be the original pair I found on the field).

I then went down to the river where 4 Beans were on the sandbar. Despite the long range I could see that one bird had a GPS collar and another a normal collar. I could not read any codes but could see that the GPS collar bird had a red ring on its right leg making it “30” and the other bird was therefore its mate 6U. Interestingly when I had looked at the GPS map in the morning I saw that 30 had left the site in Sweden where it has been for a few weeks and had headed WNW. Although the plot wasn’t in the right direction for the Glomma I suspected that was where it was going and sure enough my sighting and subsequent plots confirmed this. This is a really exciting movement because 30 has in the previous 4 springs (since it was ringed in 2015) always staged in Norway whereas this year it had initially gone to Sweden where a subgroup of the Scottish flock stages each spring (known through sightings of non-GPS neck collars). It was therefore interesting to see whether it would continue onwards to the breeding grounds (and perhaps other unknown staging grounds) without visiting Norway. That is has now come to its usual staging ground confirms how site faithful these birds are. What could be very exciting to see though is where the final 2 GPS tagged birds (tagged this winter) that are still in Sweden go. Will they turn out to be from a different breeding population?

Taiga Bean Geese in flight

7U and 27 (a GPS collar with solar cell)

long necks

3Y and 7V who were ringed in 2013 and have been seen by me annually since

there are a lot of Beans in this picture but they can be difficult to see especially as there is a depression at the back of the field which the geese typically find

27 and T8

the course that 30 took today. I spotted him at 1055 just before he phoned home