Ten adult Greenland white-fronted geese turned up in a stubble field just north of
Little Woolden Moss on Sunday having previously been seen to fly over Woolston
Eyes the day before. I couldn't get there until today, but fortunately they
waited for me and were still present this morning.
According to Birds of the Western Palearctic, there was a world population of
20,000 Greenland white-fronted geese in the 1980s which thanks to hunting restrictions rose to
35,600 in the late 1990s (British Birds 99 May 2006 242–261). Since then numbers have declined markedly and Wexford Wildfowl Reserve in Ireland gives the world population size as 18,027 in 2022 which was a 10.7%
drop on the previous year.
These days up to 6,000 winter at Wexford Slobs, down from about 10,000 a few years ago. In November 2015 I visited the slobs specifically to see these birds. The Inner Hebridean island of Islay also has a wintering population of around the same size as Wexford which I also visited in 1997.
