Barnacle Geese leave the Lake and go to ...........

One of the aims of colour ringing the Barnacle Geese (see here) was to find out where the birds go when they leave the Lake in August, and it looks like we now know. During late July/early August there was a lot of disturbance (visitors) on the Common, and the Acorn Adventure site was fully booked, so a regular check on the birds was not undertaken. However a group of 20+ birds was seen from across the Lake on 29 July. On 11 August, Mark Waldron found only 6 adults plus some goslings, only two had rings (B06 and B38 - photos by Mark) which were the only adults that hadn't dropped their flight feathers when ringed. The parents of the very small gosling broods were not ringed due to risk of being trampled in the pen. The remainder of the birds would now be flying again and were presumably elsewhere in a quieter area of the Lake. On 19 August, Andy saw a group of 40 flying about noisily, and were drawn to join 90 Canadas on cereal stubbles under the Gilfach Adventure/Climbing Centre (on the east side of Lake). He reckons that when they are this restless, they would have left as a unit that day or within the next day or so. These would have been the whole flock apart from the 2-3prs and developing goslings (all unringed) that were still on the Acorn Adventure lawns. Mark had just seven birds (4 adult & 3 goslings) there on 10 September, none of which were ringed.

On 4 September, seven of our birds were seen at Lydney Harbour (north shore of the Severn Estuary about 55 km east-south-east), all were ringed (thanks to Paul Bennell for photo record)

On 8 September, among a total flock of 210 Barnacle Geese at Slimbridge were 32 Llangorse birds (about another 8 kms further east), including six of those seen at Lydney Harbour. They included seven pairs, and one family groups. Pairs were B34/B07, B15/B05, B18/B10, B31/B14, B21/B23, B02/B33, B46/B22 and family group B11/B37 plus youngsters B43 & B45. It will be interesting to now see if the remainder of the Llangorse birds end up at Slimbridge, and if any move on to another site, maybe to  meet up with birds ringed in other parts of the UK.

Another link between the Lydney area and Slimbridge has been discovered by Andrew Jorden who watches the foreshore around Lydney. He occasionally has small groups flying across the river (either to or from Slimbridge), and on 26 August 10 birds flew over towards Slimbridge. In the poor light he didn't see any rings, but blowing up a photo he could make out grey over metal on one bird. So the 7 birds seen at Lydney on 4 Sept could be either "stopping off" on their way, or were criss-crossing 
the river.