Record numbers of barnacle geese arrived at our Mersehead reserve in Dumfries & Galloway this year, warden Rowena Flavelle tells us a bit more about these birds and the site.
Once late September arrives, every morning is filled with anticipation, have the barnacle geese arrived back at Mersehead? These geese have an incredible migration of 2,000 miles from their Arctic breeding grounds in Svalbard returning to RSPB Scotland Mersehead in late September to early October. This year, they arrived back on the 8th of October with their numbers quickly building. At Mersehead, we count the geese once a week monitoring how many are present on the reserve and also which fields they are feeding in.
Snow goose at Mersehead in October 2016
In addition, we also contribute to a wider monitoring program which counts the world population, all of which winters on the Solway Firth. Last year, this monitoring program concluded that the world population stands at 41,700 birds. That means, on a visit to Mersehead, you can see a quarter of the world population in one place! Our latest barnacle goose count recorded 11,070 individuals feeding on the reserve. This is the highest count at Mersehead in the last five years.
It is always interesting to scan through the geese searching for any that look a little different. This year, there is believed to be six leucistic barnacle geese on the Solway Firth and we definitely have two at Mersehead. Similar to albinism, these leucistic birds have extremely pale, almost white plumage, but unlike true albino birds, they have black eyes, beaks and legs.
Leucistic Barnacle goose at Mersehead in November 2017
Very often our visitors will see the leutistic geese and return to the Information Centre thinking they may have seen a snow goose. A snow goose will be bigger than the surrounding barnacle geese and has an orangey-red bill as opposed to the black bill of a barnacle goose. However, it is always worth double checking that flash of white among thousands of geese as a snow goose was present at Mersehead in February and October 2016. In previous winters, a red-breasted goose was flying with the barnacles and a Richardson's Canada Goose was also spotted.