Pink-pink

18 Sep 2013 Pink-footed Geese by Mark Shewry

Social media has been buzzing with reports of Pink-footed Goose sightings (and 'hearings' of the classic 'pink-pink' call). Birds from the Icelandic / eastern Greenland population winter almost exclusively in Scotland and England and they are beginning to arrive en masse! These birds don't stay in one place throughout the winter – in fact there is considerable movement between sites in Scotland, northwest England and the Wash / north Norfolk. This results in peaks and troughs of numbers at different locations during the winter and accounts for the regular records of flocks of these hardy travellers passing over the Pennines. Pink-footed Geese also breed in Svalbard, Norway, migrating through Norway and Denmark to winter in the Netherlands and Belgium. Ring recoveries show that a handful of birds from that population also come over to Britain, usually in response to very cold winter weather in the Low Countries. 



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