Mum and dad managed to get across the
pretty wild sea over the weekend for a quick Islay safari and whilst taking
them on a couple of game drives I realised that my life has got very goose
orientated recently. So I thought it was time for a little bit of light,
non-goose related, relief on here too.
Not a goose to be seen at Machir bay
And where better to start than with couple of Islay’s most
imposing residents?Think of Scotland
and big, bulky red-heads might not be too far from the front of many people’s
minds – but these two are of the animal variety! Highland cattle are really
quite common here; they can withstand almost all the seriously variable weather
can throw at them and thrive on the rougher hill ground that other stock
struggles to cope with. Aesthetically they just seem to “fit” with the
landscape here too. They stare at you from behind a ginger fringe with a
seriously uninterested, yet not totally vacant, expression – as if they’re
slightly puzzled by you, but can’t be bothered to work out why. But then, maybe
that’s just reserved for people looking at geese with a telescope..
Just what are you doing?
In the winter the highland cattle are joined on the marginal
hill fringe grazing by the red deer. By now the rut is over, and the boys can
re-group in little bachelor herds, have a bit of a feed and suss out who got up
to what over the last couple of months. It looks a little bit like a slightly
hungover, post night-out debrief with the boys over a greasy fry-up. This guy,
as well as having probably the most impressive set of antlers I’ve ever seen on
a wild staggie, definitely seemed to be feeling the effects and was clearly
needing to fill that belly before he felt ready to face the world again.
A weary look in his eye..
It’s not just the wildlife that’s spectacular here though;
Islay has some pretty amazing beaches. At this time of year they are windswept,
deserted and beautiful. Mum was pretty quick to get the camera out and the results will probably render the Islay tourist board redundant.
Ok it’s not very warm, but who needs to jet out to the Caribbean?
First, the confession. I love looking at rings on birds. If
that sounds pretty weird.. please bear with me – I’ll try to explain.
You may, or quite understandably may not, know that a lot of
research on bird migrations and populations has involved putting a small,
individually numbered metal ring on the bird’s leg. This has been done for
years, by experienced, serious and (no doubt) highly intelligent researchers,
but also by a significant number of amateur birders for whom it’s simply a
hobby. Whilst this system has thrown up some mind-blowing data over the years,
it inherently relies on a ringed bird somewhere down the line either being
re-captured or being found dead (or shot in some species..) simply
because the rings are small, pretty inconspicuous and almost impossible to read
on a bird hopping about in the wild.
A bit of a game-changer is the use of individually coloured
or coded rings. This allows known individuals to be re-sighted from afar,
whilst free and alive; opening up a realm of research opportunities.
Coded Greenland white-fronted goose neck collars ready to be deployed
But you have to catch your chickens before you can count
them. Sorry. With almost every type of bird comes a method of catching them.
And whilst mist nets and clap traps sound exciting, there is only really one
way to cook your goose, so to speak – to cannon-net it. It sounds spectacular,
and it is. Anything using a lot of black powder, projectiles and 1000 volts is
pretty much guaranteed to be.It sounds
easy, and it’s not. Which is a major reason why this blog post comes some time
after the previous one – we’ve been trying to catch the Greenland white-fronts.
And we struggled.
WARNING: The video clip makes
it look easy, but then they (Prof Stuart Bearhop – my Masters supervisor at the
University of Exeter – and the Irish Brent Goose Project) were catching brent
geese. And there are lots of them. And they’re a little bit thick. More on them
in a future post..
The beauty of catching geese is that we can individually
mark them with leg rings and neck collars. By subsequently re-sighting and
identifying these marked birds, they then can tell us all sorts of information
about that individual, from life expectancy and survival rates, to migration
routes, to small everyday details, like
which fields they like to feed in when – even which social network it belongs
to!
Coloured and coded leg rings on light-bellied brent geese in Iceland - the subject of a current study on social networks within flocks
Every white-front that gets caught receives a fair bit of
jewellery, as well as being thoroughly weighed, measured, swabbed and sexed.
First is a small metal ring which is issued by the British Trust for
Ornithology (BTO) – every bird that gets ringed anywhere in the UK will have
one of these – but then comes the bling. Each white-front then gets a white plastic
leg ring and orange neck collar, engraved with an individual 3 digit alpha-numeric
code. From now on, that goose can be recognized wherever it goes, and if the
sightings are reported and collected we can slowly build a picture of what it
gets up to.
Collared and ready for release - the story begins!
The re-sighting process can vary from being infuriatingly
difficult to a walk in the park (literally in the case of Dublin brent geese). It
is immensely rewarding though and strangely addictive. There are many levels of
enjoyment, from the moment of triumph when you finally crack the last letter on
the collar that had seemed half invisible and with a bewilderingly
shape-shifting ability, to the joy of seeing old friends again (corny, but
true). For me, though, it’s the stories that come from it that are amazing. Where
and when was the bird caught? Where else has it been seen before? And of course each
time that bird is re-sighted, the story grows. Has it paired up? Did it have
young this year? All this data is invaluable to researchers, but it is also
unbelievably satisfying and fascinating personally. It connects you to that
animal in a very special way.
Not just geese! A colour ringed chough on Islay
So enough of all that emotional stuff. I would urge you
though, if you see a ringed bird, or any marked animal, take the time to try
and read its tag and just as importantly report it. The information is really
valued. For birds, a good starting point is the BTO website (http://www.bto.org/). For any of you
on, or due to visit, Islay there are any number of marked birds here. All the goose
species found here have marked birds, as are many of the choughs. waders are also often worth a good look. If anyone sees
any collared white-fronts.. I want to hear from you! Ed.Burrell@wwt.org.uk. I’ll try and
fill you in with some details of the bird where possible. Just as a teaser.. there are white-fronts on Islay at the moment caught on the island, elsewhere in Scotland, in Ireland and even Greenland; keep an eye out.
So there is my defence for my addiction to ring reading. Try
it, you might get hooked..
Caught as an adult (i.e. >2 years old) in Ireland in 2001, P3A hadn't been seen since 2007 until we met a couple of weeks ago on Islay. At least 14 years old and still going strong. A shoddy bit of photography on my part, but a good story.. It's what it's all about!
This week I seem to have spent a lot of time lying down on a
bog in the dark trying to establish where my white-fronted geese are going to
bed. And white-fronts like nothing more than a nice wet bog to sleep in. Maybe
all the Sphagnum moss makes a comfy
mattress? Watching their bedtime movements isn’t quite as creepy as it sounds.
Nor, as it turns out, as easy.
White-front roost habitat. With the Opera rocks behind
You might ask why bother? Firstly, it’s good to work out where
the birds are roosting, simply because a safe roost site plays an important
part in the bird’s survival throughout the winter. By knowing the location of
roosts and having an idea of the numbers of birds using each site, we can
ensure they are protected, remain undisturbed and appropriately managed. This
has been done before, about 20 years ago – the problem is the white-front
population here on Islay has changed dramatically in that time – and the early
indications are that their roosting habits may well have changed too. Secondly
(and potentially more interestingly), we might be able to get an idea of
linkages between roost sites and feeding areas, i.e. individuals from one roost may feed in a certain area, whilst
birds from another roost feed somewhere else.Taken in conjunction with the work we’ll be doing catching, marking and
GPS tagging some birds (more of which soon!), this would give us a clearer idea
of if, as seems likely, the overall Islay population is made up of lots of smaller flocks; a meta-population, if we’re getting
technical. If this is the case, and we see that some flocks are doing better or
worse than others, we may get an indication as to what is causing the birds
problems.
Which explains why I have been hiding in clumps of heather
and ditches first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Which has meant
some early starts. Which can be a struggle for me. And the white-fronts are
pretty shy about letting you know where they sleep. Countless times I’ve seen
them fifty or sixty suddenly appear out the dark and apparently drop into a
pool – only to find absolutely no sign of them the following morning. I think a
lot of the time they are just having a bit of a drink and wash before heading
off somewhere else. It’s great being out and about though. Most memorable this
week has been the sight and, best of all, the sound of hundreds of geese
passing literally a few feet from me on their way to feed in the morning. They
were battling into a headwind and so were almost touching the ground with their
wingtips, trying to keep under the wind. They were just lifting enough to flick
over the gorse bush that had a me in it – really a brilliant experience!
Approaching barnies
Staying on the flying geese theme, I’ve had some fun this
week playing with the camera and flying barnacle geese. These funny little black
and white lawnmowers look a bit more like a proper goose when they are airborne
– and the sheer numbers of them are quite breath-taking sometimes. I did a quick
count, and I reckon there are 340 in this photo. Which is framed pretty
tightly. I think there were about 10,000 in view at this point!
340 (?!) barnacle geese
I did feel a bit sorry for them at times. Clearly, being a
goose in a hail storm isn’t much fun. They stuck at it though; they’re hardy
little things and that grass won’t eat itself. They looked like they enjoyed
the old preen and wing stretch afterwards..
I’ve had a great few days settling in and getting to know
the island and its residents a bit better – which has meant a lot of exploring
in the car, peering through binoculars and drinking tea – it’s a friendly
place!
It is also a windy place. Which is great because it blows
the rain through quickly. But there’s normally a lot more not far behind. It
all seems quite fitting though and definitely adds to the atmosphere of the
place, especially in the very south on the Mull of Oa and up here in the north
west; both fairly rugged and windswept places. I had a fun little walk on
Sunday evening just in front of where I’m staying for now at Kilchoman
(islaycottages.com) on the beach at Machir Bay, sand and foam from the stormy
sea blowing everywhere and beautifully deserted.
A windy Machir Bay
As promised, the wildlife is also spectacular. A peregrine
keeping an eye on rock doves above my cottage, a pair of Golden Eagles cruising
along, choughs and hen harrier heaven. I’ve seen five in five days so far –
going to see how long I can keep that going for. And geese. The barnies are
everywhere, literally turning green fields mottled grey, black and white; from
afar it looks something like a random pebble beach in the landscape. Which then suddenly takes off, yapping like a pack of terriers,
before deciding there was no reason for alarm and back they come to the same
spot, slightly sheepishly. There’s even a leucistic one floating around up near
here. And then there are little families of white-fronts just quietly minding
their own business in boggy field corners and barley stubbles. When there’s
often a few thousand barnies in one field even a couple of hundred white-fronts
can be easily overlooked.
It’s not just birds
though. I had a great few minutes with a pretty fine red deer stag down at the
Oa RSPB reserve, just casually wandering across the moor and then having a good
old scratch, first with a hoof and then on an electricity pole – always good
when you can’t reach the bits you need to, apparently..
Finally getting round to posting what I wrote on Saturday. Better late than never..
The 2 hour ferry crossing from Kennacraig on Kintyre to Port
Askaig on the Eastern side of Islay seems as appropriate a place as any to
start this blog – which will hopefully give a bit of an insight into the fun,
games and interesting places I’ll come across this winter whilst conducting
fieldwork on Greenland white-fronted geese upon the Hebridean island of Islay.
I guess the first question is why?! The short answer is that
Islay (pronounced eye-la) is very
important for geese – and some of those are particularly interesting. Which
begs the question..
Islay is renowned for whiskey (definitely the topic of a
future blog post or three) and wildlife. In wildlife terms it is perhaps most
famous for hosting over 40,000 barnacle geese; who come here for some winter warmth
(?!) from their east Greenland breeding grounds. However in mid-late October
each year the barnies are joined by Greenland white-fronts – described by a BBC
World Service programme in 2008 as one of the “world’s most charismatic birds”!
Whilst this may be arguable to all but the most over-enthusiastic goose aficionados,
they truly are a remarkable bird. They undertake an arduous migration in the
spring and autumn each year between their nesting sites in west Greenland and
their wintering areas in Ireland and Scotland, via Iceland.
Rather touchingly,
they live in tight-knit family groups; a rare trait in nature and unheard of
amongst waterfowl. We know (from studying birds that have been caught and
marked with uniquely coded orange neck collars) that some individuals will stay
with their parents in a non-breeding capacity for up to nine years – probably
foregoing all chance of breeding themselves, but almost certainly benefitting
their family members in the process.
Y6H - marked in Iceland this year. We'll be keeping an eye out for him!
However the white-fronts are in trouble. They are undergoing
a dramatic population crash – 40% in the last 10-15 years – from a high of
35,600 in the spring of 1999 to a current population around 22,000 birds. As
such, they are classed as Endangered and in the UK are red-listed as a species
of conservation concern. Critically, the Islay population has declined
considerably faster than the global average – from around 13,000 to about 5,000
during the same period. The reasons behind this particular decline are what we
are trying to establish through this project.It seems that either the Islay birds aren’t getting the resources through
the winter they need to successfully breed later in the year, or, they are
simply spending the winter elsewhere.
I’ll save the detail of how we’ll attempt to answer these
questions for another time – something to look forward to, maybe?! Meanwhile,
the ferry is approaching the jetty and I’m about to set wheels on Islay for the
first time. Will let you know how we get on!
