Friday, 9 May 2014
Spring and summer 2014 - expeditions
This spring and summer season is particualrly exciting for the Brent group as a large proportion of the active researchers are in Iceland currently (May) and following the Brent as they migrate beyond the arctic circle to the Canadian breeding grounds...
Watch this space for regular updates!
Tuesday, 19 November 2013
The widow-maker gets christened!
After a week's reconaissance in Dublin, the Exeter catch team set nets this morning, the first at an inter-tidal location (narrowly missed the opportunity and Arenaria interpres got in the way!) and the second on a golf course in Dublin. The latter resulted in a catch of ca. 20 birds - hopefully the team can send an update which is more accurate with pics!
It's turned cold and, at this stage, not too many Brent are on grass in Dublin.
The subject line refers to our pet name for an extraordinarily large cannon-net which is brand new and was fired successfully today. The first of many successful firings we hope!
This coming weekend there will be some posters and talks on Brent at the 6th Irish Ornithological Meeting at University College Cork.
It's turned cold and, at this stage, not too many Brent are on grass in Dublin.
The subject line refers to our pet name for an extraordinarily large cannon-net which is brand new and was fired successfully today. The first of many successful firings we hope!
This coming weekend there will be some posters and talks on Brent at the 6th Irish Ornithological Meeting at University College Cork.
Thursday, 17 October 2013
Fat light-bellied Brent geese have more offspring - but only if the weather's good
I pinched this neat catchy headline from Xav's twitter feed when he circulated the link to this further neat paper from his thesis.
Entitled "Environmental Conditions during Breeding Modify the Strength of Mass-Dependent Carry-Over Effects in a Migratory Bird" this paper continues on the main theme of Xav's PhD work - looking at carry-over effects in our study population of Light-bellied Brent Geese and Xav's phrasing in the headline of this post just about says it all!
So we have demonstrated that female geese in better spring body condition are more likely to successfully raise young in that breeding season (established in a few other populations too and previous Brent papers led by the Exeter team have shown this). What is new here is an examination of the role of summer breeding conditions (snow melt, temperatures, winds on migration - those sorts of factors that we might expect would have an impact on the birds directly or indirectly) which shows that if the arctic breeding conditions were poor, irrespective of birds body condition, reproductive output would be bad.
The full article is available here http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0077783 and is well worth the read. Well done to all involved.
Entitled "Environmental Conditions during Breeding Modify the Strength of Mass-Dependent Carry-Over Effects in a Migratory Bird" this paper continues on the main theme of Xav's PhD work - looking at carry-over effects in our study population of Light-bellied Brent Geese and Xav's phrasing in the headline of this post just about says it all!
So we have demonstrated that female geese in better spring body condition are more likely to successfully raise young in that breeding season (established in a few other populations too and previous Brent papers led by the Exeter team have shown this). What is new here is an examination of the role of summer breeding conditions (snow melt, temperatures, winds on migration - those sorts of factors that we might expect would have an impact on the birds directly or indirectly) which shows that if the arctic breeding conditions were poor, irrespective of birds body condition, reproductive output would be bad.
The full article is available here http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0077783 and is well worth the read. Well done to all involved.
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