Those Barnacles

Interested in Wendy's post about the feral Cardigan Island Barnacle Goose population. I wonder if any of the Teifi watchers can provide further background on the history of the population, specifically what have they been recorded doing in the past during the winter? How far have they been proven or suspected of wandering? It really would be good to establish if the 17 at Marloes are definitely, probably, possibly, or not the Cardigan birds! If the Cardigan population is 40, and only 11 there currently, and assuming the Marloes birds are from Cardigan, where are the other 12? Has the flock ever split into 3 before? Questions, questions!

Looking back to the Birds of Pembs (Rees & Donovan, records up to 1993), Birding in Pembs (Green & Roberts, which covered records from 1994-2003) and the Bird Reports for 2004-2009, it seems that the Teifi 'population' built up pretty quickly from 4 in 2003 to 40 in 2009. The largest flock recorded away from the Teifi, since the Skomer/Marloes wintering population of 1981-1989 (which peaked at 130 birds), appears to be 8 on the W Cleddau in December 2004 - so the 17 at Marloes currently is the highest count away from the Teifi in the county in 21 years, and either represents an important wild flock or a significant movement of feral birds (from the Teifi or who knows where!). I would be very interested in any further thoughts or information that others can contribute.