Monday December 24, 2007

35,000 geese

Since last Friday we are in our small house at the Belgian coast side. We are taking some days off and will return on the first day of the new year to Brussels.
As all geocaches are found here, I had to look for something else to do. And as I like to make long hiking trips, I often went walking in the polder.
And that is now just the right time to do so! More than 35,000 geese are staying in the neighborhood for their "hollidays"!
The Greylag goose, the white-fronted goose, the Barnacle goose are all geese that stay for the winter in the fields between Knokke, Ostend and Bruges. It is here their "Benidorm". So every day I go out "hunting" with my small camera to find those great birds. I try to find these geese that wear a neckband with a number on it. The geese breed in Svalbard (esp. Spitzbergen) and migrate via staging areas in Norway to wintering grounds in Denmark, The Netherlands and Belgium. By resighting these numbers their migration patterns, site use and population dynamics can be analysed. More information can be found on: http://pinkfoot.dmu.dk