BRIAN'S COUNTRY DIARY SEPTEMBER 2008
There are millions of species of wildlife alive today (some of them only just, due to man’s uncaring attitude to what is not only theirs but HIS only environment!). Probably most of them we are not even aware of. In other words they are species yet to be discovered and named by scientists. Many of them will have attributes that are of value to us. We let them become extinct at our peril.
Among bird groups I have long been fascinated by the geese. Ancient in the avian scheme of things, they have an almost global distribution, from the tropics to the high arctic, and have evolved to live in an equally diverse range of habitats. Two remarkable species among them are the bar-headed goose, and the red-breasted goose. Both can be thought of as endangered due to the fact that they have quite small populations, only a few tens of thousands (there are billions of us).
If you wanted to name your average goose then the bar-headed would be a good choice. About average goose size and shape, it is all over washed-out mid-grey in colour. Except the head and neck which are white, with two broad black bands crossing the head from one side to the other. It lives in western China and the high plateau of Tibet, and it winters in northern India. Wherever it goes it tends to upset the farmers, due to its liking for the crops that they are tending, so it tends to be persecuted. Add to this the fact that both it and its eggs are good to eat, and you can see that its future as a wild bird is far from assured
Any one who has ever looked at a map of this region will know that if you insist on wintering in India, and breeding in China, the only way to fly between the two, without making a hefty detour, is over the Himalayas. And this is exactly what they do. Migrating flocks of bar-heads have been sighted by climbers on Mount Everest at over 25,000 feet. Without oxygen and insulated clothing a human would rapidly die. Yet these birds are capable of flight in the thin bitterly cold air, with no ill-effect at all. More than that, they do it as a matter of routine.
One the other hand, the red-breasted goose is perhaps the most colourful member of the group. Among the smaller geese, not much bigger than a farmyard duck, it is strongly marked in black, white, and chestnut-red. It spends the winter in mid-Asia, and migrates north to the tundra to breed, timing its migration to coincide with the retreat of the winter ice-sheet. Once there it has to complete the whole breeding cycle from courtship and mating, nest-building, egg-laying and incubation, and rearing the young to independence in just a hundred days. Pretty short for so large a bird.
But where would I go to see these birds, I hear you ask, without a climate-damaging long-haul air trip? All you need to do is to take yourself off to the nearest waterfowl collection, sometimes even your nearest park lake, as both species are very likely to be found there. Here where we live, in the heart of the Northamptonshire countryside, there is a small ornamental lake in the village, where I see both species on an almost daily basis, along with a huge assortment of other water birds
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