On the way I thought I picked out a Mediterranean Gull from a dispersed group of Black-headed Gulls on the fields on the Leysdown Road before the planted wood. I stopped to have a peek at the Raptor Mound, and there was a probable female Marsh Harrier over the reed-bad of the Capel Fleet.
On the beach there were numerous Black-headed and Herring Gulls, together with a few Greater Black-backed Gulls. There were also Oystercatchers, Redshank, a couple of Godwits, and a Curlew.
But the birds I had really come to see, the Dark-bellied Brent Geese, Branta bernicla bernicla, from the Russian North Artic were also there, in small groups of half a dozen or more. They are said to breed mainly on the Taymyr Peninsula in the far, far North. They winter in the South East of England (50% of the World population), and France and Holland, and in the spring they gather in the WaddenSee and then migrate further North and East via stopping off sites particularly such as the White Sea and the Kanin peninsula, heading for the Taymyr peninsula, travelling thousands of miles altogether.
The white neck flashes on the necks, and the dark bellies, only a bit less dark than their uppersides, were clear, and the white rears showed well. All of the ones that I saw looked like adults. The number of young, I seem to remember, may perhaps be partly dependent on the number of lemmings, and the resulting predation choices by Artic Foxes. They are certainly quite inconsistent breeders year on year.
The population dropped drastically in the 30s through to the 50s, recovered into the 70s, and stabilised in the 90s, at about a quarter of a million birds.
The Brent Goose population is generally protected in Western Europe under the EU Birds Directive 79/409 and under various national legislation. Hunting is not currently permitted, except in some local regions. As a result of the recovery and further increase of population size, however, proposals have been made in some countries for a regulated harvest of Brent Geese.
The Brent Goose is a success story in modern conservation; as a result of protection on the wintering grounds, together with other factors such as feeding on agricultural land and the recovery of eelgrass beds, they recovered from a very low population level in the 1950s.
