Scientific expedition to Kanin Penninsula
Within the last week of June a team of Russian goose scientists will start for a new expedition to the arctic breeding grounds of wild geese. Thanks to the financal support of Vogelschutz-Komitee e.V. a group leaded by Dr. Alexander Kondratyev will continue goose studies at the Kanin Penninsula, northern Russia. This penninsula is an important, last stepping-stone for the geese before reaching the breeding areas on Yamal or Kolguev as well as a breeding site itself.
The team will leave St. Peterburg on 24-6-2010 to Archangelsk and will take a boat to Kanin there.
- Neckbanded Greylag (c) H. Kruckenberg
Neckbanding of Greylags in Germany
Since 1998 two different projects working on Greylag studies by using neckbands, now. So birds were ringed in the counties Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Northrhine-Westfalia, Hessia and Lower Soxony. To read more about this, go here.
- Transmittered bird (Geert) with its mate (c) K. Veldkamp
Cas on its way to the breeding grounds
While Kees obviously lost his transmitter near the Jadebusen (Lower Saxony, Germany), transmittered bird Cas is our last tracked bird. He seems to be okay and is nearby the arctic circle, now. Hopefully he`ll breed sucessfully again!
- Goose counters stuck in snowbanks
International census of geese 2010
Since the 1960th geese and other waterfowl is counted synchronously every year mid of january. So this year on 16./17.01., too. The results will be collected by national organisations during the next weeks and send at least to Wetlands International who`ll work out actual estimates for all waterfowl populations. This will be basis for national and international protection strategies as well as to defince actual criteria to identify staging sites of international value.
This january high snow cover hindered lots of goose counters during their counts. Smaller ways were not accessable. Nethertheless, snow cover and ice forced the waterfowl to migrate more to the west and several traditional staging sites in Germany held only a small number of swans and geese, some were abundand.
New: Distribution of sightings in 2006/07 and 2007/08
The study bird migration it`s one of the basics to analyse distribution of sightings of marked birds. Of course, this could only be done after more or less all sightings were reported to the project and its website at www.geese.org. So, actually we present some new maps about distribution of neckbanded Whiterfronts during 2006/07 and 2007/08. Read more.
- 1AA black was marked in Slovakia
New marking of White-fronts in Slovakia
On 12-3-2009 we had the first marking of a white-fronted goose in Slovakia. Having been wounded through shooting, the bird was marked with code 1AA black and released after successful rehabilitation.
- Now also numbers are used as first digit
New collar type on White-fronts
Starting in November 2008, collars with a number to begin the alphanumeric combination were used, because we had already used most of the unmistakable combinations starting with a letter. All observers are asked to read neckbands carefully and report only verified sightings at geese.org.
Counting Offspring
Breeding success of bird populations is an important factor determining population size. To forecast population development, there are lots of volunteers doing counts and estimating the percentage of immatures in the flocks of geese every year. Read more about the first results here.