Critical birders could have an obsessive curiosity in birds, however as everyone knows one factor they don’t like are birds which, they consider, aren’t correctly wild. Right here within the UK it’s taken a very long time for the purists to get used to Purple Kites, which at the moment are frequent and widespread all through a lot of the nation. They’re practically all descended from birds that have been launched initially over 30 years in the past. Pheasants, launched in nice numbers for taking pictures, are regarded with disdain, whereas no one has a superb phrase to say in regards to the flocks of Ring-necked Parakeets that now squawk noisily in all of the London parks.
A blended flock of Barnacle and Higher White-fronted Geese on the Suffolk coast, February 2018. Flocks of over 1000 Barnacles are recorded each winter in Suffolk
There’s one drawback with this strategy, as it will possibly result in birds being ignored. Right here in Suffolk we now have spectacular wintering flocks of Barnacle Geese, usually numbering 1000 birds or extra. Purist birders could take little curiosity in them, concerning them as no extra attention-grabbing, or thrilling, than Canada Geese, however are they lacking one thing? In keeping with Suffolk Birds 2023 “the birds within the county are an more and more frequent feral resident”, however are they? Feral Barnacle Geese could have nested in Suffolk for a few years, however the variety of pairs stays comparatively small, and definitely not ample to account for flocks of the scale now seen each winter.
Suffolk Barnacles, January 2024
So the place do these geese come from? My guess is that they’re birds that transfer throughout from the Netherlands for the winter. The European Breeding Hen Atlas 2 makes attention-grabbing studying. “Initially confined to the Arctic, breeding [of Barnacle Geese] is now confirmed all through a lot of the Baltic coast S North Sea. This modification is clear as an illustration within the Netherlands, the place the rising resident Dutch inhabitants is taken into account to be drawn from birds breeding across the Barents Sea and wintering within the Netherlands.” It goes on to say that the Dutch inhabitants is estimated at 16,000-22,00 pairs. The Atlas was printed in 2020, so these numbers could have been grown since then, although I collect that the Dutch Barnacles have suffered badly from hen flu.
A feral Barnacle, photographed in North Norfolk in April
The Atlas attributes “the fast improve of Barnacle Geese to a number of components”, of which an important appears to be improved safety of the Svalbard and Russian populations. As these geese unfold naturally as nesting birds by way of the Baltic, then into Denmark and Holland, it’s hardly shocking that they need to seem in Jap England. It’s lower than 200 miles from the Suffolk coast to that of the Netherlands, a simple flight for a robust migratory hen equivalent to this goose.
There’s a long-established breeding inhabitants of feral Barnacle Geese in East Anglia. These have been at Pensthorpe in Norfolk, July 2022
In keeping with the Atlas, the mixed inhabitants for the Russian, Baltic, Netherlands inhabitants is round 770,000 people, which is an terrible lot of geese. I’ve watched migrating flocks of Barnacles streaming previous the Baltic island of Öland within the autumn. The numbers heading south are large, a lot so that you just suppose that the following day the flocks will likely be smaller, as there can’t be many extra to come back. You might be fallacious, for the following day, and the following, the flocks maintain flying previous in undiminished numbers. It’s spectacular stuff.
Migrant Barnacles in Estonia
Intriguingly, the inhabitants of Darkish-bellied Brent Geese has additionally elevated vastly throughout the identical interval, however the birds present no indicators of colonising Europe, and there are hardly any data of them nesting away from the arctic tundra. (A pair did lay infertile eggs in Iceland in 2018, however that’s about the one document I can discover). Considerably Brent have by no means bred prolifically in captivity, in contrast to Barnacles.
Although numbers of Darkish-bellied Brent Geese wintering in Britain have elevated dramataically within the final 50 years, they continue to be solely arctic nesters
There’s a sure magic within the migratory geese that fly to us yearly from the arctic. Birds which have bred in Holland and easily flown throughout the North Sea could lack the identical attraction, nevertheless it does appear almost definitely that they’re descendants of pure wild birds, not from captive inventory. Barnacles are energetic, entertaining geese, attractively marked and with neat proportions. I for one actually take pleasure in seeing the flocks that now winter on the Suffolk coast, and really feel that it’s excessive time that we took extra curiosity in them and their actions. Dismissing them as “naturalised” doesn’t do them justice.
