FROM THE ARCHIVES - January 14th, 1984:Brent geese, it appears, were abandoning Ireland in numbers in the 1980s and some intrepid explorers were setting out for the Arctic to try and figure out why, according to this Irishwoman's Diary by Elgy Gillespie which also sought an explanation for the mysterious (to outsiders) attraction of birdwatching.
AMONG BIRDWATCHERS, that select but happy band, the Branta bernicla hrota is right at the top of the list. The rest of us probably feel pretty ambiguous about the Brent goose, as it is more commonly known. Alas, they are leaving us and we soon will have to leave as well.
“There’s something about their cry which is very appealing,” explained UCD horticulturist, Tom Keating, who will be setting off this May with five other zoologists to look at them in their summer surroundings over the Arctic Circle on Bathurst Island. “Hrrrp, hrrrrppp, hrrpppm” Tom illustrated, displaying a talent that will make him as popular with them as they are with him and maybe even get them to change their minds.
Tom Keating, at 23, is one of the few qualified to “band” birds in this country and this month he and the rest of the exhibition are launching a novel scheme they hope will help their trip.
Called “Sponsor A Goose”, the scheme will entail you getting your very own Brent goose charted and checked all the way from the polar wastes to the slobs of the Bull Wall or Kerry or Strangford Lough. In exchange for a fiver Tom will send you regular information about its progress: Such as “Flew in today from North of Resolute and looked for eel-grass off Dollymount Strand, hrrrp. But the damn place is swarming with birdwatchers so we’re moving on again, hrrrp-hrrrp.”
Along with Redwings and Fieldfares from Scandinavia the geese are familiar for wintering out here, and a rough survey in 1981 put their tumbling numbers at roughly 10,000. Aside from being large, noisy and distinctively marked with a white collar, and several wing bands of juveniles, the geese are quarrelsome adherents of the nuclear family with particularly cheeky children. The current data suggests their numbers are falling steeply, but little is known about their nesting habits, their food supply of zostera or eel-grass, and if they are menaced by other creatures (Arctic foxes, say). The members of the trip want to compile a complete whodunit – or whatdunnit – on their decline . . .
For the first leg of their 100 exhibition they have now been pledged help by Aer Lingus and others, but now comes the hard task of collecting special weight sleeping bags and dried food, which they will be carrying on their backs. They need to take a first aid course, learn how to use a firearm (they’ll be following a polar bear route and have decided being chewed to death by a bear would be a nasty way to go) and get toughened up in the Wicklow Hills. David [Simpson] sees them all running up and down Lugnaquilla doing triple skips as they trot till late springtime, while the geese are also limbering . . .
For a fiver a goose, or £25 if you prefer a whole flock, you will be helping to find out exactly why our Brent geese don’t seem to love us anymore. It is possible, David concedes, that polluted estuaries here no longer offer their favourite bites of zostera, and they now have to quest in Wales for cleaner meals.
If the boys manage to get to Bathurst before the birds do, they will reach it just as the snow starts to melt and the birds begin nesting. Why, I asked David, do birdwatchers feel so passionately about those hours spent freezing in the mud? “It’s soothing . . . sobering,” he tried, ‘‘and a perfect sport for the egocentric. You see many parallels of human behaviour among bird life. It puts things into perspective.
“The trouble is, though, that you got 2,000 of the keenest birdwatchers on Bull Island the other weekend – it’s central and ideal for them. But it’s no longer ideal for birds.”
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