The third part of the expedition was again totally different from the first and second one. The main focus was put on goose catching and goose ringing. When the helicopter arrived on 19 July in our camp, Jochen Dierschke from Germany jumped out and Jari Kontiokarpi jumped in to go back home. Jochen brought along dried fish from Tobseda, a present from the Dutch-Russian expedition team and also a cold, and little and little every one of us came down with that…
In the following days we were checking all nests we found during the last two months. By counting the number of the membranes we could determine how many chicks were hatched. Sometimes we found nests which were totally empty - they were predated: foxes and skuas were able to steal the eggs in a moment of the parental inattentiveness. Whereas gulls and reindeers usually ate the eggs immediately or took them for their own chicks, we could watch closely how foxes were carrying the eggs away and digging them somewhere into the soil as a winter stock. Often we found the eaten eggs directly lying next to the nest or some meters afar. It is easy to distinguish between eaten eggs and eggs from which chicks hatched successfully: when the chick was hatched, you can see very clearly a membrane. Depending on the habitat (swampy area or steep river slopes) the percentage of hatching success differed. This again depended basically on the activity of the predators. Besides, breeding success depends on the condition of the breeding bird: If the goose has reached Kolguev in good condition in spring, the chances are high that the brood will be successful. Also the geese have to choose a good nesting site. Birds that arrive early in season usually find good nesting sites, but in return they have to suffer from hard winter conditions if spring starts late. Finally, young and inexperienced geese have often less success than older geese.
We were buzzing with excitement in the camp. Helmut sent us a message via the satellite telephone: Wus is on Kolguev! Wus is a male White-fronted Goose and he was caught in the Netherlands and fitted with a satellite transmitter. Alex, Elya and Alena got prepared to go and look for him. In deed, they found Wus within a flock of 140 White-fronted Geese, Barnacle Geese and Bean Geese exactly at the place of which Helmut sent us the coordinates! Some days later Jochen and Nicole started bright and early to the west coast. They rechecked the nests for hatching success on the "west corridor". The track was going along the riverbank of the Kitovaya and the closer they got to the coast the higher numbers of moulting Barnacle Geese they found. They were lucky to see harbour porpoises in front of the Barents Sea coast. We made further excursions to the glacial lakes north of the river Peschanka up to Izhimka-Tarka and to the lower part of the Elgov-Tarka River. There we found high numbers of moulting geese and young families.
To get an overview about the number of moulting geese and family sizes we conducted regular counts along the Peschanka and made day trips to the glacial lakes. While on the river particularly moulting geese were present, the families gathered on the small lakes in the plateaus. At the beginning we could see everywhere small groups of geese (between 10-200 birds) or even single families. Over the time the geese jointed to bigger flocks and later we often found (sometimes mixed) flocks of more than 2,000 birds on the river. The same picture we found for the families: In July we only observed 4 - 10 broods swimming on a lake, but in August the number was increasing up to 30 - 40 families. On 13th of August we counted along a route of 40km almost 300 families. That day two of us spread out in the same area to conduct an area-wide count (175 families on a 25km trip and 107 families on 15 km trip). Also the number of chicks per family varied during the season which indicated the variation of hatching success and fledging success. The fledging success depends on several factors such as time of hatching and weather. E.g. shortly after the first chicks are hatched, there is only a small number of goslings. The chicks are at higher risk to be eaten by predators than the chicks which hatch later in season. Then the goslings are a prey which is plentiful everywhere in the tundra. The later chicks also profit from big goose flocks which offer shelter.
During our expedition we focused on the breeding biology of arctic breeding geese. It is particularly to have information of breeding birds on Kolguev: How many of the hatched goslings per family will survive? This and further questions can only be answered if we are able to distinguish the families exactly from each other. Also we wanted to find out where all these geese migrate to and where they spend the winter. Therefore, we tried to catch moulting geese and families on the glacial lakes.
During breeding season the adults are still flyable. It is hard work and time-consuming to catch flyable birds as they are already quite suspicious of humans due to bad experiences. However: Bird ringing is not only science but also handcraft and… skill! For the clap net method, we waited until the chicks were hatched. In the absence of the parents we carefully set up the clap net at the nest and made it invisible by masking it with vegetation. This had to be done very quickly, because the adults do not leave their nest alone for a long time once the chicks are hatched. Without leaving any marks we left the nest and hided in the surroundings. After some minutes the parents came back and if the female was not suspected of anything it returned to the nest. In that moment the net is closed via an automatic flap mechanism which we controlled by radio. The goose was caught within one second! Then the measurement and ringing procedures started. Also now everything had to go quickly because we did not want to put the chicks at risk.
To catch the moulting geese we built up nets installations. The place had to be chosen very carefully and it was necessary to look for an adequate site and to observe the behaviour of the geese before we started. Glacial lakes between small hills were ideal for the catching: hidden and not seen by the geese we could install the nets in the valleys. The nets tapered off and ended up into a corral which we could close when the geese were inside. After the nets were built up, we spread over the area - everyone equipped with a walkie-talkie. Every person had his own special task: to chase the geese out of the water into the nets or to chase them back to the nets if they tried to escape. Our efforts were not always successful: Once we tried for hours and hours to chase Barnacle Geese with a canoe from a small lake into the nets. But the geese seem to know about our intention…
Within 7 catches we were able to catch 103 geese - 69 White-fronted-Geese, 32 Bean Geese, 1 Barnacle Goose and 1 Greylag Goose. Except of one female which was already wearing a Dutch ring, every goose got a metal ring of the bird ringing station Moscow. Adult geese were additionally marked with colour rings (44 White-fronted-Geese and 12 Bean Geese: black neck collar, 13 young White-fronted Geese and 1 Barnacle Goose: legrings lime-white). We measured the head, the bill, the tarsus (=lower part of the leg), and the ninth primary feather. These measurements are strictly defined to be able to compare the growth of the birds and population sub-groups from all over the world. Besides, we took a smear and blood sample to check for diseases. For genetical analyses we took feather samples. Before the goose was released we measured the weight and took a photo of it. It might be unbelievable on the first sight, but every goose is an individual: Bean Geese have an individual black-orange pattern on their bill and White-fronted Geese can be distinguished by the pattern on their belly.
August was by far the most exciting month: Everywhere between mosses and stones we spotted small chicks. Young willow grouses were running through the tundra and also the water bird chicks were already busy to look for food. In contrast to songbirds who raise their young after hatching in the nest, young water birds are so-called precocial birds and have to look for their own food right after they have hatched. At that time we always took some metal rings with us because the young chicks very easily to catch and to ring as long as they were not already fledged. To ring chicks of Peregrine Falcons and Rough-legged Buzzards was a bit more tricky: We had to ring them on the nest while the adults were flying alarming close to our head…The young chicks were already small devils: They made not only a hellish and deafening noise, but they already had pungent claws and a dangerous beak!
When Jochen arrived with the helicopter he brought along three cucumbers, one tomato for everyone and ten apples. That was all fresh fruit and vegetable. It is not always easy to buy fresh food in Naryan-Mar… Of course we all were a bit disappointed but at least we had fresh bread and dried fish from Tobseda and also tow bottles of beer (1 liter each!). But if you have to live for three months in the wilderness you know to help yourself! The nature of Kolguev offers you a whole menu! On the top of our favourite food was the fish that we could catch almost every day in the river. We added simply salt and could eat it without cooking the next day or we just fried it the same evening. Angelica archangelica substitutes fresh vegetable: It was growing along the river, and on the way back from our day trips we collected the closed flower buds. They tasted fresh and a bit bitter and reminded of Brussel sprouts. Later in the season we collected mushrooms. They were growing everywhere! To the salad we added sorrel leaves and if someone became ill he soon got well with an extract of lichens. And during our last days on Kolguev the cloudberries were ripe! No one could resist the flavour of the fruit which is so rare in Germany: sun-ripened and freshly picked!
The second half of August we were plagued by a very heavy storm again. The whole day it was misty and rainy. We tried to make the situation a bit more comfortable and baked some cakes and watched DVD on our laptops. What else could you do in such a rain and storm? When we were creeping into our tends around midnight, the rain already had decreased but the wind was still blowing over the camp. Everyone was waiting for his tent braking down, puddles of water were already in every corner and our heads were hidden by the side of the tend every second… And then, in the middle of the night, it happened! Elya's and Alex's tents broke down. And even worse we were looking blank to find out that our tent „Brest – no speed limit“ very well had speed limit of 22 m/sec (9 Beaufort). In this tent we stored all our food and equipment. So we spent the most sleepless night on Kolguev. Actually, our new living-tent called "Adventure ahead" gave us advance warning… The next day we were busy to repair the tents and to dry all things. The water table of Peschanka had increased enormously during the night and the river was not crossable by foot anymore. Our Camp Creek which was almost dried out the days before, overflooded its banks. The water was almost as high as after snow melting!
The 16th August, the day of our return back to civilisation, was coming closer. We started already some days before to dry all things and to pack the first equipment. The last evening we had a small farewell party. We lightened some tea candles (during the nights it was already getting "dark") and we even had a cake! Overconfidently we got up very early the next morning and broke down our tents. It was misty but we were optimistic: Usually the sun breaks through within some hours. So we collected all our package close to the landing place of the helicopter and waited… and waited and waited… while eating cloudberries (because it was already midday and we were getting hungry again) and putting on more clothes (because the weather was getting colder and the wind was increasing). We were still hoping that the helicopter would reach soon. Unfortunately, we had no contact to the outside world anymore. The Iridium-telephone was working for about 10 minutes per day and you carefully had to wait for those minutes if you did not want to miss them. So we reloaded the telephone with our emergency battery and stared onto the display to call in the right moment (the connection tower had to appear) the airport in Naryan-Mar. Around half past six in the evening we were lucky and had connection to the airport: In the morning it was so misty in Bugrino and Tobseda and the captain decided already after breakfast not to fly to Kolguev that day…So we had to wait one more night. Luckily, we still had some food for such an emergency case and also one last bottle of vodka (Alex really takes care for everything). However, the next morning did not look better then the last one. We even had thunderstorms and lightning! But miraculously the sun broke through and sometime in the afternoon we heard the looked-for clattering of the helicopter!
After a short stop in Tobseda where we picked up the Dutch-Russian team we arrived at about 6 o'clock in Naryan-Mar. Though some members of the Tobseda-team unfortunately missed their flight to Moscow we were all happy to be back: It was a nice and warm summer day in Naryan-Mar and we ran into the shops to buy nice food. We stored our equipment for the next year in garages in Naryan-Mar and then we still had to organise a lot for our return to St. Petersburg and Moscow, like rebooking tickets and registrations. We all put up at the same hotel, so we had - after our first real shower again - a big party with mountains of fresh salad, bread and ice cream for desert. One toast followed the other: to Kolguev, to Tobseda, to the geese and to both of our teams, to international cooperation, to the people who fabricate outdoor equipment and simply to all. We were satisfied and happy to be back from an exciting summer in the wild arctic tundra. All of our expedition members arrived saved and sound home. An international team: Russia, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland. Nicole Feige
