Most people are thinking about birds at this time of year - but more of the cooking and eating variety! Well we haven't got turkeys on the island, but we have got geese! We are talking dark-bellied brent geese here, or if you like latin, Branta bernicla bernicla, the smallest goose in the country. They started to arrive in their family groups a month or two ago and it was lovely to hear the familiar honking as they flew up the Crouch Estuary.Not everyone welcomes them though - to our local farmers they are a pest, eating the crops and even worse paddling all over what they don't eat with their big webbed feet, damaging the young crops. However, as they are a species of European Conservation Concern and protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act , they should not be on anyone's table next weekend. Farmers must resort to ever-inventive methods of scaring them from the crops.Those of us that are not protecting crops welcome them here each year . Brent Geese breed in the extreme high Arctic in all northern countries. The range extends from Greenland to Svalbard and northern Russia, continuing through Alaska to the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. having had their breeding season in the north, as the winter sets in they fly south to feed and shelter along our coast and estuaries. As wintering Dark-bellied Brent Geese in Britain are concentrated in relatively few areas,wider countryside conservation measures are not ideally suited to the conservation of the species. Many important grazing marsh and saltmarsh areas used for feeding are protected within nature reserves, such as nearby Old Hall Marshes RSPB Reserve in the Blackwater Estuary, where the grassland is managed specifically for Dark-bellied Brent Geese through appropriate grazing regimes.These birds fly thousands of miles each year, often in family groups, following each other in the familiar loose formations.This winter our keen-eyed birders spotted that two of these geese had been ringed, and subsequent enquiries revealed that it was a mother and daughter; the adult female had been caught and ringed last spring on Terschelling, Netherlands,with a young female (born in 2010),still together after more than one year. Although the weather as I write is forcing them to take shelter behind the seawalls, the mudflats of the developing Allfleets Marsh are a popular place for all the overwintering ducks and geese on Wallasea Island. Hopefully, over the coming holiday break we will get brighter days to entice us out to see them!Wishing you a happy christmas and merry new year.Normal blogging service will resume in January :)
I've gone wild on Wallasea!