The email copied below comes from Antony David Fox perhaps from Ireland, Iceland or Denmark and was sent to Mark Grantham the chairman of CBWPS here in Cornwall who kindly forwarded it on to me,
Hi Mark, Long time no hear,
Enormous thanks for this info which relates to a cracking story:
V3Y was a Greenland White-fronted Goose caught at a place called Hyanneyri in west Iceland on the 23rd of September 2017, It was fitted with a GPS logging device and solar cell that you can see on the collar in the image posted on the Cornwall Birding website. We could see during its subsequent stay at Hvanneyri that it associated with CDZ {a juvenile male] and another adult female goose fitted with an Ornithela GPS logger 17778 and an unringed probably male that escaped capture. This social group moved to a farm called Leirulaekjarsel in Myrar at around 08.30 on the 25th September where they remained until they departed, you can see by the later sequence on the west side of the fjord in the image below [Hvenneyri is ringed in yellow, ] how they fed on Leirulaekjarel fields by day and roosted to the NW of the lakes of the interior. Both Hvanneyri and Lierulaekjarsel are important staging areas for these geese in the spring and Autumn,
I do not have online access to the tracking data for V3Y but I am copying my collegue Mitch Weegman { Missouri University and responsible for the project using this collar} in on this who does.
What happened next is pretty amazing because it made southern Ireland safely on its way south with our any problem, passing over Tremore,Waterford on the 29/10/2017 at 04:26 UTC but seemed not to realise that it was close to Wexford ! It continued onwards for some reason, doing a tour of the channel Islands and Brest in Brittany before turning back towards home at wexford, reaching Tacumshane Lake on the south coast of county Wexford and a well known GFWG resort as well around 05:27 where it rested before coming up to the slobs, going straight into the North Slob By about 07:20 on the 30/10/2017 ! My Guess is that V3Y was caught up with 17778 for the majority of the Journey, but got separated and ended up in Marazion, But hopefully Mitch can add the full tracking story from his end,
BELOW IS THE TRACK OF 17778 FROM ICELAND TO WEXFORD.
You will see that after overshooting Wexford,17778 took a route out and back that passed over Cornwall, so it seemed highly likely that this group were caught up in inclement weather and maybe pitched down in Cornwall. Do you know exactly what date and time it arrived and was first seen, if it was seen with others and whether it stayed longer and if so when was the last observation ?
Anyway, all good stories have a happy ending, so whatever happened en route, I can tell you that John Wilson who started the collar project of Greenland White-fronted geese back in 1983 resighted the social group CDZ, V3Y, Ornitela, 17778 and an unringed adult goose in field number 25 on the Wexford North Slob on the 8th November 2017 together with Alyn Walsh, who was responsible for cannon netting and banding these geese in this story and every other one in Ireland and Iceland back in 1983. So V3Y had found her way home and joined up with her lost family !
Attached is a list of all collars seen away from Wexford so far this autumn, including your observation, Let me know if you need any more information, but intrigued now to hear what V3Y actually did to see if she strayed from the family fold before re-joining up again at Wexford ! What a story eh?!! Amazing birds, we do not know the half of what happens to them on migration, but these trackers are beginning to reveal the most amazing things!
Very best wishes and Hearty thanks for letting us know, as no one else had communicated this record. Tony.
Thanks to all concerned in forwarding these details and I hope to eventually gain information with regards to Mitch Weegma's GPS tracking of V3Y and will in due course add it to this blog to complete the story, Alan James.
No comments:
Post a Comment