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gooseology | 11 July 2025 |
The picture on the previous page is a nice introduction to something more we do while studying barnacle geese. This is a pair with two goslings. Can you see the difference between male and female? The male is slightly bigger but also takes on a more guarding posture. It reaches higher than the female. With a telescope we can read the coloured ring from a distance of 200 meter. Identifying the letters is a bit more difficult. On the yellow ring the code is BYS. If you look very careful, you can assemble the Y from looking and the bottom and top of the next code. Het full code starts with y for yellow: yBYS.
 In the second picture we can also see two out of three characters of the male. We call these mint rings green. The code of this male is gLHT. For the last character I looked him up in the database. In the database we have 2 observations of this pair on nest 114. In the nenst were 5 eggs, which hatched on 23 June. During the nest check that day all the eggs had already a perforation to the outside world made by the bill of the gosling. We call that a hole.  Later on the breeding island of Storholmen 25 June, we saw this family walking with 8 goslings. Two days later in Ny-Ålesund they walked with 9 goslings. Adopting is normally a good strategy as it increases dominance of the family unit, so it can obtain the best feeding position in the flock. But the number of goslings decreased fast to two goslings on July 12. The arctic fox has hammered this family.  We know from our study, the average goose does not exist. Ten procent of the geese produce 50% of all offspring and 50% of the geese never bring young to Scotland. Therefor it is relevant to do a study on individuals. In this way we can calculate clutch size, egg survival, gosling survival and mortality. | |
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| 20250711, 09:50 | 20250711, 09:55 | 20250711, 10:00 | all items shown with small pics | ||||
| fox kils gosling | goosology | maarten lectures |
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