Migration news from Castle Espie
Pale bellied Brent, having arrived in record numbers to Strangford this year, are now continuing their journey southwards, refuelled and ready for their next stopover. With a recent drop of 15,000 geese, this week's count was similar to the previous one at 23,500 suggesting that there must still be large quantitities of eel grass left on our mudflats to hold back such large numbers of geese for a while longer. A few regular individuals can be identified from their leg bands with one particular pair (BI yellow/yellow and BH yellow/yellow) returning to Strangford for their tenth winter in succession -and still together, having bred successively only twice and separated once on migration to later find each other again on Strangford in 2010.
