Daniel Bergmann, wildlife and landscape photographer in Iceland in April 2024 alerted us to the following sightings:
Five ringed GWF at Þykkvibær (Thykkvibaer), Iceland, April 17.
One w/transmitter HT
A3A (w/smaller logger)
A8A (paired w/A3A)
A9A
A5C
We are very grateful to Daniel for his sightings, especially of ringed and collared birds and were able to give him some background to what he had just seen.
Enormous thanks for your reports of collared Greenland White-fronted Geese from Þykkvibær, Southern Iceland – this is great news. These birds were caught as part of an EU project called Echoes (https://echoesproj.eu/) studying the effects of climate change on bird habitats around the North Sea. All these geese were caught and fitted with their collars on the island of Colonsay in January 2023 by a team from BTO and RSPB and the local RSPB staff as well as David Jardine, a loyal observer of the geese in Scotland, have all been following their movements on the island.
It is vital to have reports of the orange-collared geese from human observers, because this tells us so much about family relationships, inter-site movements and survival and reproductive success, the reason why we are so grateful to you for supplying this information. A3A, A5C, A8A and A9A were males of unknown age (i.e. adults) at capture, HT an adult female. The fact that they are associating together on migration and on the winter quarters strongly suggests that they are related in some way, likely parents/offspring/siblings of years prior to summer 2022. We know that parent-offspring and sibling-siblings bonds may unusually persist for up to 13 years in this population of geese, so it is highly likely they are kin!
Photos by Daniel Bergmann
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