News Archive
- CANNON-NETTING CO. SLIGO
We spent Valentine's Day with a difference this year, cannon-netting a record high number of Brent Geese at Enniscrone Golf Course. Led by Kerry Mackie, 149 Brent were bagged, tagged and released, handled by a team of blow-ins and locals - about 20 strong.Birds were marked with Lime-Yellow, White-White and White-Blue band combinations and we expect lots of observations from this site now for a few years.Many thanks to all our participants and facilitators - BWI and NPWS folk locally, the Golf Club, NPWS, Dept. of Justice, Dept of Agriculture, Dermot and Alanna O'Regan and an Garda Siochana - for making this possible - CENSUS RESULTS AND PLANS
While we await compilation of entire results from the autumn census it would appear that the total will be close to 40,000 individuals. Productivity too averaged at around 30%.The mid-January census will take place on the weekend of 12th-13th January 2008. - LATEST CENSUS RESULTS 10 Oct 2007
We undertook our international census over the weekend of 6/7 October and the latest results confirm a record-breaking high count for this flyway population.Almost 37,000 birds have been counted in Iceland and Ireland. With more data expected the final figure is likely to approach 38 or 39,000. - A BUMPER BREEDING SEASON
With a very early arrival of very large numbers of birds the striking feature are the very large number of young birds in flocks.Contrasting with last year when we estimate a mere 1.9% of the population to be raised in the summer of 2006, provisional estimates suggest a figure of around 30% would apply for 2007! This would tie in with our finding of large clutches in Axel Heiberg this summer - but let's face it we don't know how typical this is. Whatever, the population has had a "boom" breeding season. - ORVILLE MOVES SOUTH
Our last remaining satellite-tracked bird recently exceeded the 500-day mark with a functioning transmitter.Orville arrived in western Iceland after a very quick crossing of the Greenland ice-cap in early September. He remains at the sandy lagoon at Akraos in Faxafloi and has recenty moved a few km north to Kaldaros. Further details as ever on www.wwt.org.uk/supergoose