Greenland white-fronted geese, Little Woolden Moss

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 rose to 35,600 in the late 1990s thanks to hunting restrictions (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, 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.

Excluding the flocks of 2000 that I saw at Wexford Slobs and on Islay, this is the first double figure count I have for the species since June 1987 when I watched 12 fly between the islands of Hirta and Soay in the St Kilda archipelago and before that in March of the same year I saw around 100 at Loch Ken in Dumfries and Galloway. Back in the early 1980s I occasionally saw around 20 at various places on Deeside and on Anglesey.

Greenland white-fronted geese,
 Little Woolden Moss - © John Tymon

One of them had a satellite neck collar X6Y. Unfortunately the satellite tag is no longer working. 

This bird was ringed as an adult female on 25th September 2016 at Hvanneyri, a staging site in West Iceland. It was then seen at Loch Lomond 2nd - 29th November the same year, before relocating to Wexford, where it was seen every winter to 2019. Every spring and autumn to the end of 2019 it returned to the same staging site in Iceland, but then there were no subsequent sightings until these birds were seen flying over Woolston to arrive at Little Woolden Moss at the weekend (source Manchester Bird Forum). It seems quite surprising that a bird with a neck collar such as this could go missing for 4+ years, given that the species is usually site faithful and that the wintering grounds of geese are usually so well watched. I wonder where it's been hiding?

Traditionally a goose of bogs, the habitat at Little Woolden Moss probably meets the exact requirements of these birds for roosting.