25.03 D-day

Coming Monday and Tuesday is a big day. A team of goose lovers is going to come back to western Julland (Stadil Fjord area) ,as they do every year at this time, and ring and mark some pink-footed and barnacle geese. We hope to catch around 150-200 birds which will be added to our database of about 4000 already marked pink-footed geese. Thanx to neckbands, we can track individual geese on their ways to and from breeding ground. We can get to know much more about timing of their migration, reproduction and survival rate, lifespan etc.

We also hope to deploy 5 additional satellite tags and add 5 new stories to our blog. Below are some pictures from the first trials of attachments of our new devices. So finger crossed for a good catch. 

More information in the next post....

25.03 Time to come back

The spring has arrived. Geese and swans flocks are flying above our heads. I also spotted many birds species coming back from their wintering areas and this is definite sign that spring is here . Ingunn, Danuta and Lukasz give us regular GPS positions. The sun conditions are good enough for solar batteries to be fully charged and soon we should get even more positions per day. Unfortunately we haven't heard anything from Caroline. He is probably in DK with his tag still on his back. We have no idea what went wrong and we can only hope that someone can spot this goose with blue C6H neckband and tell us what happened. Christiane's tag is also not working very well. Last positions we received from 03.03 from western Julland between Nissum and Limfjorden.

And here are the stories of the others:
At the beginning of March, Lukasz was flying back and forth between Esbjerg and Ringkøbing Fjord but recently send us positions from Stadil Fjord area. These areas are still full of geese flocks.

Ingunn is mainly around Nissum fjord. Danuta flew all the way from northern to western Julland and joined other flocks around Stadil and Ringkøbing Fjord

In about 2-3 weeks we may expect first flocks to head north towards Trøndelag- the first stop before breeding areas in Svalbard. All geese have to now gain a lot of energy for a long flight and that is why we may observe huge flocks feeding in the fields.