Index Home Join IPCC

The Bog Goose

The Greenland White-fronted Geese are Arctic-nesting geese, which spend the winter in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The country of Greenland is part of their name, because it is in West Greenland that the birds nest in summer. The bird also occurs in Iceland.

The Greenland White-fronted Goose is one of the rarest races of geese in the world, with a population in 1992 of 30,000 birds. The world range of the geese is limited to 4 countries Greenland, Iceland, the United Kingdom (Scotland and Wales) and Ireland.

The range of the geese in winter and summer includes some of the least populated areas of the United Kingdom and Ireland and many inaccessible parts of west Greenland.

Greenland White-fronted geese grazing by Colman O'Criodain

What do the geese look like?
The Greenland White-fronted Goose is a brown bird with extensive black barring on the underparts of its body. It has a white area at the base of an orange bill. The legs are orange.

Traditionally, the species has been known as the 'bog goose' because boglands are just one of the wetland habitats where the geese are found. Other habitats used by the geese are marshes and wet grasslands near to rivers or lakes.

The geese have large bills which are used to search for the nutritious underground storage organs of wetland plants, such as Bog Cotton, White Beak Sedge, Buttercup and other grassy plants.

About 15,000 geese, half of the world population spend the winter in Ireland. The geese are found in greatest numbers in the Republic of Ireland on agricultural land in the Wexford Slobs, and in Lough Foyle in Northern Ireland. In the rest of Ireland the flocks are small ranging in size from 100 to 750 birds, sometimes even smaller than this. These flocks are found grazing on the wet grasslands, bogs and marshes along our major rivers.

The geese return to the same sites, year after year in all the countries where they are found. They are extremely shy birds, sensitive to disturbances by man. With the extensive drainage of the bogs that has occurred in the last 40 years, not only in Ireland, but also in Scotland, Wales and Iceland, the geese have lost their habitats and this has caused a decrease in their population numbers.

Peatlands are still vital to the smaller flocks of geese. They are used as nocturnal roosts and feeding areas. They are also important as refuge areas if the geese are disturbed from their day time feeding sites, along rivers such as the Little Brosna, Shannon and the Owenduff.

Greenland White-fronted Geese can live for up to 20 years.

Migration
The geese leave Ireland in spring for their winter breeding grounds on the west coast of Greenland. They fly in family groups of about 30 birds. They can reach speeds of up to 55 kilometres per hour depending on wind speeds. The geese travel a distance of 3,200kms across ocean and ice caps to Greenland. They make their first stopover in Iceland where they spend a few days resting and feeding on boglands there in two areas, the Landeyjar and Myrar-Snaefellsnes. Their journey continues over the Greenland ice cap to the breeding grounds.

The world distribution of the Greenland White-fronted Goose. The shaded area in west Greenland indicates the (potential) breeding range. The arrows indicate the autumn migration route through southwest Iceland. The population winters exclusively in Ireland, west and north Scotland and Wales. (Greenland White-fronted Goose Study)

Breeding cycle
When they first arrive in Greenland at the beginning of May the geese congregate in flocks of up to 200 birds. At this time the marshes and tundra vegetation are thawing out after the long winter.

After a week or so spent feeding on grubbed-up underground roots and bulbs, whilst the snow melts, pairs split off from the flocks and settle near freshwater marshes and bogs in the deeply glaciated valleys. The nests are built out of heather, grasses and lichens. They are lined with down. The clutch size is five to six off-white eggs.

Juvenile Greenland White-fronted goose chick by David Stroud, JNCC

When the goslings hatch in late June, under a sun which is in the sky all day long, they are led by their parents from the deep valleys to hill-tops and plateaus where there is abundant food growing along the marshy edges of numerous lakes. They are fed by both their parents. After six weeks the young geese are fully grown. The young can stay with their parents for more than one year and can help in caring for the newly born goslings and by keeping watch for predators. While the parents attend to the young, they begin their annual feather moult. They rapidly drop the old and worn flight feathers, and replace them with new ones to enable them to make the long migratory journey to the wintering grounds with their young. During moulting the geese become flightless and very vulnerable to natural predators such as the Arctic Fox and of course man. In August and September the parent geese and their families start to form flocks and join up with other young geese that did not breed. By the end of September the young are fat and strong, and the adults have completed their feather moult and they are ready for migration.

Conservation
The world population of Greenland White-fronted Geese declined from between 17,500 and 23,000 in the 1950's to between 14,300 and 16,600 in the late 1970's. Following conservation measures - mainly stopping the shooting of the geese - on the wintering grounds and in Greenland during the early 1980's, and several successful breeding seasons, the population is now approximately 30,000.

The conservation of the Greenland White-fronted Goose is the responsibility of the 4 countries (Greenland, Iceland, Ireland and the United Kingdom) which support the geese at different times of the year.

1989 Greenland Expedition Alyn Walsh working on behalf of the National Parks and Wildlife Service took part in an expedition to Greenland in July and August 1989. The team included 8 members from Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales and Denmark. The group were trying to find the distribution and density of breeding geese in a particular area in Greenland, and to catch and mark flightless birds.- i.e. during moulting, the birds lose feathers from their wings and they cannot fly. The study area was in Western Greenland, North-West of Søndre Strømfjord. No transport was available, so all food and equipment had to be back-packed into base camps in the Tundra. The members rounded up the flightless geese on foot. They successfully put neck bands (easier to read at long distance) on 216 young geese. In future years they will be able to find out what happens to these birds. They used a small aeroplane to survey the distribution of the geese. The survey group had to wait 6 days at the Air Base at Narsarsuaq until the weather was favourable. The four man crew consisted of two full-time observers, a navigator/recorder and pilot. The first flight was of 3 hours duration and the group counted 230 geese in the area North of the Søndre Strømfjord.The next day the flight took the group further North over the wilderness plain of Eqalummiut and to Naternaq. The group observed a total of 2032 geese. A total distance of 10,000 km2 was covered on this journey. Their observations showed them that the geese were thinly dispersed in the breeding grounds in contrast to their wintering grounds in the Wexford Slobs and Islay (Scotland) where they are concentrated in a small area in much greater numbers. The expedition helped the members to understand the conditions and problems faced by a nesting goose, conditions which are quite different to those on the wintering grounds in Ireland. With the information collected on this expedition and others in 1979 and 1984, the members are drawing up an international plan for the protection of the Greenland White-fronted Geese. This involves co-operation between conservationists in Ireland, Scotland, Iceland and Greenland, all the countries used by the geese. Ireland has an important part to play in the plan because half of the world population of the geese, 15,000 birds spend the winter here.

Birds and bogs Bogs are important habitats for many species of birds including rare and threatened birds such as Red Grouse, Red-throated Diver, Greenland White-fronted Goose, Merlin, Hen Harrier and Golden Plover. What do bogs have to offer birds? Food During the summer months bogs have plenty of creepy-crawlies which are a great attraction to birds. These include such things as Harvestmen, Spiders, Crane Flies, Springtails and so on. There are also berries for the birds from plants such as Cranberry and Bilberry. Daylight During the summer daylight length is long and night-time is short. This means that birds can use this extra daylight to cash in on the plentiful food supply for their growing young. Few predators In bogs few predators are found compared with other habitats. Their numbers are kept down by the fact that their food supply becomes scarce during the winter. The low density of predators means that nesting birds stand a much better chance of rearing their young than would have been the case otherwise. The survival game Due to the nature of the bog habitat, most bird species are ground-nesting. The disadvantage of this is that if a predator does come along a bird may be very vulnerable - unless it can hide, which is what they try to do. This is achieved by having a plumage which blends with the background vegetation so that it almost becomes invisible to the casual observer. This type of plumage pattern is called cryptic. Bog birds such as the Curlew, Skylark, Meadow Pipit, Snipe and Red Grouse are all brown in colour to help them blend in with the colour of the bog. Other birds, especially the predators, do not have to rely on the colour of their plumage to hide them. A survival strategy for them is the ability to cover large hunting areas in search of prey. Good examples are the Kestrel, Merlin and Peregrine Falcon. What happens to the birds in winter? Once the winter sets in most of the bird life deserts the bog in favour of less severe conditions. A few birds, like the Curlew and the Snipe, migrate short distances from the bogs to the coast in search of food. Other birds, such as the Bog Goose, actually migrate to Ireland from Arctic Greenland to spend the winter in Ireland on the bogs. During the winter there is an ample supply of food in the storage organs of the bog plants and the geese feed on these. Let's take a closer look at this special bird.

Catherine O'Connell