Pink-footed geese commute

One of the highlights of my bird year is to first hear and then see the wavy skeins of Pink-footed Geese flying over from their summer breeding quarters in Iceland and East Greenland.

This morning, I headed to my local park to carry out the Wetland Bird Survey. I counted the Greylag and Canada geese flock, the Common Gull flock, all recently arrived, and the resident Mallards and Moorhens. But al through, there was a beautiful background noise of calling Pink-footed geese. Flock after flock flew over, their arrival preceded by their echoing calls. Most were going north, 1500 of them.

You might be puzzled to see these geese flocks flying north or east early in the morning, how can it be that they are not going south? The reason is these birds are wintering or staging their migration in the Humber Estuary. What we are watching is their daily commute, in fact, their morning rush hour! Every night, the flocks gather to roost Read's Island and Whitton Island in the upper Humber estuary, where they are safe from disturbance and predation. At day rise, the birds fly to fields on Holderness or the wolds to feed, favouring fallow fields, or the spilt grain in those fields still to be planted, and also left-over potatoes! A similar movement happens towards Lincolnshire.

The Pink-footed geese population suffered strong declines in the 20th century, but it has been steadily increasing in the last couple of decades. The increase was followed by a renewed use of the Humber Estuary for wintering and also as a staging post on the way to Norfolk. UK coasts and estuaries now hold a sizeable amount of the total wintering population of this geese species, estimated to be about half a million birds.

With the constant daily movement, it is unavoidable that a few stragglers will separate from the flock. They call pitifully when trying to catch up. Many will eventually find the flock. Some others, which could mainly be young birds which haven't learned the route, may be disoriented and join a Greylag flock, as has happened several times in our local parks. 

More information

A Humber Goose spectacular. RSPB Blog by Pete Short.

Mapping the Pink-footed Geese.

WeBs survey results.

Crow roost at the large poplar

For over 15 years, there has been a Carrion Crow roost at University. In winter, I used to leave work when the crows started to gather on a large poplar tree to spend the night. Each arrival being greeted with raucous calls. I found the atmosphere amazing as their vocal repertoire is so diverse: gurgling, croaking, trumpeting, beak drumming, almost quacking, compounded by the often different tone of voice of different individuals. Tonight, I happened to be by the roost at the right time again. At least 50 crows were already assembled on the top branches, leaving respectful spaces between them, members of pairs closer to each other, and, as I was approaching, pairs and bands of crows flew over me to settle on the tree.
 Crows can fly long distances to roost in their traditional trees (I have read up to 50 miles for American Crow). It can be well past sunset when they settle and they leave first light in the morning. When the nesting season starts, around March, territory holders stop roosting communally, while non breeding birds might carry on sleeping on the traditional roost.
I took this little video of tonights' crow night-time assembly.

Magpie Roost

The last few days in the afternoon I've spotted one or two Magpies in a tree in the street. Not that Magpies are not common around here, a few weeks ago there were no less than eight on a tree nearby - apparently the collective name is a 'tidings' of Magpies, bearers of good news.

It just called my attention every time they were in the same tree, an almost bare Maple. Today that happened again, so I went out when it got dark to check the tree. A full moon night, and there! the black and white bellies of two roosting Magpies!