Geese counting II part

Every year the BSPB Svishtov branch monitors the wintering geese of the Svishtov-Belene lowlands, on the bank of the Danube, as part of the Red-breasted Goose International Working Groups simultaneous winter counts.
Most of the geese are White-fronted geese (Anser albifrons) in a mixed flock with a several dozen Greylag geese (Anser anser). Amongst the flock every year, A few globally endangered Red-breasted geese (Branta ruficolis) are spotted.
The geese fly into Bulgaria every morning, from their roosting area, Lake Suhaia, in southern Romania. The geese prefer to sleep on the lake, out of reach of predators, but come to feed in the farm field of Bulgaria.
The arrival of the geese is the ideal time to count them, as they arrive in their characteristic orderly flying formations: V-shapes or rows.
For small numbers of geese BSPB volunteers count each goose individually, but when the geese begin to arrive en masse this becomes impossible. Then our volunteers count out ten geese, and holding up their finger to mark what that quantity looks like. The volunteers then count the rows of geese by 10s, or even 100s.
Often volunteers working together will divide the sky into sections, shouting out numbers to a recorder, who makes note of every group of arriving geese with lists of numbers and arrival times. The recorder also writes down weather conditions, as these could explain counting irregularities (for example, artificially low numbers on a foggy day), or real changes in their numbers (for example, snowfall will drive the geese further south in search of easier to find food).

Category:

Pets & Animals

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• Flying
• geese
• II
• part
• How
• to
• count

[KoSmYn6]

Suhaia Lake , me live in Suhaia :P