October update - arrival of thousands of birds!
Autumn is here at Caerlaverock and the geese are back. The first barnacle geese arrived on Sunday the 23rd of September and those first 91 birds were soon joined by thousands more with 9,600 counted from the farmhouse tower on the 3rd of October.
These birds have flown all the way from Spitsbergen, the largest of the Svalbard group of islands high in the Arctic Circle, some 78 degrees north and almost 2,000 miles from the Solway.
The entire population winters here and there are still more geese to arrive, we expect them in the next few weeks depending on wind direction.
On the first of October we saw one of the white, leucistic barnacle geese in the flock. There are only ever a few of these birds in the entire population of over 30,000 birds.
On the high tide at the beginning of October there were 2,500 pintail, 2,000 shelduck, 3,000 knot, 1,400 dunlin and 200 grey plover. Peregrine, merlin and hen harriers have all been hunting over the fields and marshes and duck numbers continue to rise with over 1,100 teal and more than 300 wigeon in the first week of October.
We have had a few whooper swans flying in but again numbers should increase in the next month or so especially if we get some north-westerly winds to aid their flight south from Iceland. A distance they can fly in less than 12 hours with the wind behind.
We are open every day from 10am to 5pm and our swan feeds are at 11am and 2pm daily.
