Great news that we have already received the story of the ringed Greenland White-fronted Goose that was seen at Marloes on Monday.
"P5D was a adult female Greenland White-fronted Goose caught on 3 October 2001 at Hvanneyri, the campus and farm of the Agricultural University of Iceland in the west of that country. It was caught with its mate P8C and four out of her 5 goslings were also marked P1F, P2D, P5C and P9D, the remaining gosling eluded capture, but was amalgamated with the rest of the family after the catch.
"P5D was a adult female Greenland White-fronted Goose caught on 3 October 2001 at Hvanneyri, the campus and farm of the Agricultural University of Iceland in the west of that country. It was caught with its mate P8C and four out of her 5 goslings were also marked P1F, P2D, P5C and P9D, the remaining gosling eluded capture, but was amalgamated with the rest of the family after the catch.
She was first reported on the winter quarters by a guy called Dick Hewitt, who found her with the rest of the family (including the unringed sibling) at a place called Mid Mains Farm near Elgin. This was fortuitous for us, because Dick kept an eye on this group which remained from at least 11 November until 6 December 2001, and it was this flock that got him interested in Greenland White-fronted Geese. Since that time, he has been a real stalwart supporter of our work, re sighting a huge number of birds for us from throughout Scotland. This area of eastern Scotland is emphatically not a regular site for Greenland White-fronted Geese that tend to be highly site faithful, so when they disappeared, we were not surprised to learn that P5D and her family were later seen at a known regular site for the race (and winter home of many geese staging at Hvanneyri) at Appin, near Benderloch in Argyll, west Scotland on 18 February 2002. We saw her and the family at Hvanneyri in October 2002, and she has wintered at Appin or nearby Inverfolla every winter until 16 January 2007, when she was still accompanied by offspring P5C and P9D. We are not sure what happened that year, but she turned up at Wexford Slobs in SE Ireland on 12 March 2007 and was seen there in winters 2007/2008 and 2008/2009 (last on 9 February 2009). I am not sure if she has been seen there this winter so far, but I will find out from Alyn Walsh who searches the flock there for collars. It was he who caught P5D in Iceland and has been responsible for catching the vast majority of marked Greenland White-fronted Geese currently at large."
Tony Fox
NERI, Aarhus University
Denmark
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