1st Brent Geese ringing in Dublin!!

What a day!!!!    What an amazing day.

After months of organising the Irish Brent Geese gang managed their first and very successful ringing session in Dublin.

Yesterday (Thurs 11th Feb 2010) they managed to ring and record 194 Brent Geese and today another ringing and recording of 53 geese.

Here’s how the day went.

8.00am – Some people met at the Causeway Bull Island, I drove to Pat’s house in Howth and followed her down to Redarches in Baldoyle. This was the same inland feeding site she showed me a few weeks ago. It is fenced in, has limited public use and has been a definite daily feeding site for Brent Geese for months – perfect site for canon netting Brent Geese.

When we get to Redarches there are already plenty of people there setting up the the nets, canons and wiring.

The setup is: One massive net is attached to 4 heavily weighted metal poles. These 4 poles are put into 4 canons which are in turn buried into 4 pre-dug holes in the ground. At the end of each pole is an orange wire with a connector at the end. A long grey wire is then attached to each of the 4 canon’s orange wires and this grey wire is attached to a detonator box. When the fire button is pressed this fires the canon powder in the bottom of the canons which sends the poles out over the field, with nets attached and hopefully Brent Geese underneath.

Canons are prepared with gunpowder and electric wiring. Redarches, Baldoyle, Dublin 13

Nets are untangled and laid out

Nets are attached to the heavy projectiles which are placed in the canons which are fixed into the ground with orange wire left above the ground

The grey wire which will be attached to the canons and detonator

Alan connecting the grey detonator wire to the orange wires attached to the canons

Me guarding the orange wire and making sure no-one stood on the connections (Dick Coombes took this pic)

By 9.30am Net 1 and Net 2 are set up and ready to go.This is Net 1.

The hopeful catchment area (other side of the path).

Double checking the wiring from the canons are live and connecting well to the detonator. You can see the path to the left - that's where the nets are.

The most important box of the day. The box for the hot cross bun.

Oh no don't press fire yet - there's no Brent Geese in the field!!

Oh he's just eating one of Pat's hot dogs

Once the nets are set up and connections are checked it’s just a matter of waiting for the geese.

9.30am now and it’s hoped the geese might arrive 11.30am ish – so car trips for coffee, sangers and toilets.

Then back to the carpark to wait….

10am - Waiting....

11am...Waiting

12 noon... Waiting

1pm.....Waiting

2pm...Waiting

2.30pm...Still Waiting

In between these waiting pics, there were some landings of Brent Geese but they’d feed for a while and fly off, usually scared off by something random.

And also – we actually waited most of the day in our cars not sitting outside – this was so the geese didn’t sense any unnecessary disturbances.

We did a lot of watching the plastic Brent Geese decoys.

The theory behind the decoys being that they would attract passing Brent Geese with the message of ‘Hey, come join us in this field, it’s completely safe to feed cos Look, we’re feeding and we’re fine. Just don’t judge us cos we’re plastic.’

The Plastic Geese. We spent a lot of the day sitting in those cars in the distance so the geese would feel safe to land

At about 2.40pm some Geese land right next to the decoys.

The decoys attract the real deal to land next to them.

Hundreds and hundreds followed. Finally - Baldoyle, Brent Geese party central.

With this amount of geese everyone was very tense in their cars having watched hundreds of geese continually landing. It was quite a herd and Pat and Cian started their ‘Twinkle’.

‘Twinkling’ is basically calmly and slowly walking around the field in a way that moves the birds in a certain direction (ie towards nets) – tis sheepdog herding human stylee.

2.45pm – Cian and Pat are doing a great job

2.50pm – About 1300 geese are inches away from the nets

2.54pm – 1300 Brent Geese lift and fly off – we don’t know why.

2.55pm – We still don’t know why.

Did they really ALL just fly off?

Seriously, did they really ALL just fly off? Yes they did Alan, I'm sorry.

Bollix

4pm and more geese land in the field.

Cian and Pat Twinkle again

4.20pm - Pat and Cian twinkling again

4.45pm - the geese are twinkled into the catchment area

The FIRE button is pressed and out shoot the poles and nets catching about 50 geese.

The nets and canons are set in a way that no harm can ever come to the geese. Alan said that in all the years he’s been netting he’s never had any bird casualties.

Brent Geese under the netting, Redarches, Baldoyle, Dublin

Retrieving the geese from nets in a way which causes no harm to the geese.

The Brent Geese are carefully put into bags and watched over whilst the ringing area is quickly set up

Meanwhile others collect the nets back up

Kendrew and Richie setting up test area. Two tables are set up, this one will take samples from the geese to check their bloods etc

Pat and Cian sort out Rings

Philip about to get his goose tagged

Kendrew tags

Alan tags, Mia records

One of my birds UDWR is tagged and sexed - a Female

UDWR is weighed, she's 1220g

Records taken. The geese at our table didn't have samples taken from them so we'll never know the ages of our geese.

At one point the Gardai turned up. Probably someone reported either the canon bangs or the netting of the geese. They were happy enough though once they were told it was an official catch with permission from the NPWS and that BWI and RSPB were involved.

Gardai arrive John says 'it wasn't me!'

You're nicked.

So there you go!

What a day.

I was so happy to have experienced the netting and recording of the geese. I could see that it involved a lot of organisation and a huge amount of experience – mostly to protect the welfare of the birds.

Cian putting the call in about the 2nd successful day ringing Brent Geese in Dublin

I gave 3 Geese in for ringing.

So if tags UDWR, VBWR or XBWR are ever read – they’re mine! Well not mine but you know, I held them before and whilst they got tagged, weighed, measured etc.

XBWR however is extra special and is called Cara.

Me holding XBWR, might also answer to Cara (probably won't though).

XBWR was a female pale bellied Brent Goose which I took from one of the bags and brought over to Cian to be tagged.

She weighs 1240g, has a wingspan of 325mm and measures 87.5mm from the back of her head to tip of her bill.

When Cian tagged the goose I was holding, he tagged her with white and red tags, the right one was ‘X’ and the left one was ‘B’ – this made me smile because years ago my girlfriend lived in one of the few squats left in Berlin and the squat was called XB – plus my gf is white and has red hair – this amused my little mind anyway. So if White Red XB turns up again in Iceland or North Canada, say hello to her – and send her back to Dublin!

Thanks to everyone involved in the catch – it was an amazing experience and I had such a good day.