Update from autumn staging areas in Iceland

An unimaginative title but this is a short report on our September trip to the staging areas. A two car team have been here all week focussing our work on locating and downloading GPS data from tagged geese and cannon-netting birds. Thus far we've failed on the latter front (as but could have caught small numbers) but we've had some mighty success with downloads and more awaits. At this time of year of course the most interesting information is where the tagged birds have been all summer in the Canadian Arctic. And our picture is building.

So we've had 4-5,000 geese at Alftafjordur in Breidafjordur and tried to catch there (close but no cigar) and read a few rings on birds drinking at freshwater inflows or hauled up on skerries. Not much else to report that we can see on the northern side of Snaefellsness.

Then to the south in Faxafloi we've seen birds at a range of sites but found concentrations and thus spent most of our time in the convoluted series of islands and shallow inlets which make up Myrar. We estimate anything in the region of 10-12,000 birds there. Like Alftafjordur these birds are there because of the large beds of Zostera that are present. Smaller numbers are present at Grunnafjordur too - 1-2,000.

We've managed to download tags there (some stonking data to be revealed shortly), read some rings (some of the first read there in autumn) and are trying to catch. It's been a really valuable time there as we've got some exercise and got a real sense of the place and how it is used. Historically this is second only to Strangford in terms of its concentrations of birds but it is way less accessible. 

We've seen some young but certainly not many family groups. It may be the case that the majority of family groups are yet to come in from Canada and Greenland. Of what we've seen the proportion of young is very low (< 2%) but that may well change.

We'll provide a more cohesive summary later but for now its goodbye from Iceland.