26 Greylag Geese staging and wintering in France
©Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust
Wildfowl
(2013) 63: 24–39
adults were moulting and before the young
were fledged. Some moulting non-breeding
geese were also caught in the same areas. In
Norway the geese were caught mainly by
hand-net from a boat during moult (at
which time they are skilled at diving), both at
breeding areas along the coast and at the
non-breeders’ moult sites (Andersson
et al.
2001). Neck-banding of the geese in the
Nordic countries commenced in 1984
(Andersson
et al
. 2001), where 7,142
Greylags have been neck-banded up to and
including 2011: 3,642 in Norway and
c
. 3,500
in south Sweden. In addition, 3,546 Greylag
Geese have been marked in the Netherlands
since 1990, giving a total of 134,000
records reported to
. The
database also included re-
sightings of 991 Greylags neck-banded
in Germany (16,014 observations) and
358 from the Czech Republic (2,413
observations since marking started in 1995)
which were used in this analysis. Data from
the German marking programme in
are mainly for birds neck-
banded from 2000 onwards; geese were
marked earlier, from 1980, but these earlier
sightings are not yet available in the
database. Seven Greylag Geese have also
been neck-banded in the Camargue, France.
Recoveries mainly of shot birds with
metal rings, reported to the French ringing
centre at the National Museum of Natural
History in Paris and to the Swedish ringing
centre, were also included in the analyses.
When the analysis was conducted the
database included 207,000 observations of
neck-banded Nordic geese, with a further
152,000 sightings of geese marked elsewhere.
On analysing the data, only one sighting of
each marked individual was included per area
and season (
i.e
. over the whole of a successive
autumn, winter and spring period).
Variation in the numbers and distribution
of Greylag Geese wintering in France was
determined from the international waterbird
censuses (IWCs), which have been carried
out in France and other European countries
in mid January each year since the mid 1960s
(Wetlands International 2006). National
coordinators work with a network of
professional and amateur counters to
determine the number of waterbirds at key
wetlands, and these IWC data are then
collated by Wetlands International for
determining the trends and status of a
species at the population level. Further
details of the goose count programme in
France, which is coordinated by the Ligue
pour la Protection des Oiseaux, with the
collaboration of the Office National de la
Chasse et de la Faune Sauvage, are provided
by Deceuninck
et al
. (2013).
Results
Distribution and numbers
According to the mid-January counts,
Greylag Geese wintering in France
congregate at some tens of sites, with 86 sites
recorded holding geese in January 2012
(Deceuninck
et al.
2013). A few sites (5–7)
account for more than half of the total
numbers counted in January: Camargue
(5,700 birds in 2012), Lac du Der (2,823),
Baie de l’Aiguillon (1,961), Etangs de Moselle
(1,468), and Lacs de la Forêt d’Orient (1,455)
(Fig. 1). The geese occur mainly along
Atlantic coasts and in the northeast part of
the country, with the Camargue being the
