Catch Time Again!!!

Today found a small team of us up at Cross Island, at the north end of Strangford Lough, attempting to catch more geese. Two of the smaller half-nets were set, and, under canon-netter Kerry Mackie from WWT, sixteen birds managed to wander into the catch zone of one of them, and bang!! they were soon literally in the bag!!

 

 



The reason for bagging the birds is that it keeps them calmer whilst waiting to be processed, and following the latter the birds are placed in a holding tent prior to release. Birds are all released at the one time, to help to keep families together. In this case, half of the birds were juveniles which had been produced during this summer's breeding season.

Some shots from today above. Now the search is on to try and sort these birds into families, before they move on to other sites. All birds were ringed with a lime-green ring on the right leg, and a yellow ring on the left leg. This is an old series, and today we were using combinations which, for one reason or another were gaps. So, if you come across a juvenile with a lime / yellow combination, it will be from this catch.