The Pink-footed Goose is a medium-sized goose that is 60-75 cm long with a wingspan of 135-170 cm and weighs 1.8-3.4 kg. It has a short bill that is pink in the middle with a black base and tip, and pink feet. Populations have risen significantly over the last 50 years due to increased legal protections, with numbers in Great Britain rising almost tenfold to 292,000 in 2004. They nest on cliffs close to glaciers or small islands for protection from predators and feed on various plants, grains and leftover crops in fields over winter.
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The Pink-footed Goose is a medium-sized goose that is 60-75 cm long with a wingspan of 135-170 cm and weighs 1.8-3.4 kg. It has a short bill that is pink in the middle with a black base and tip, and pink feet. Populations have risen significantly over the last 50 years due to increased legal protections, with numbers in Great Britain rising almost tenfold to 292,000 in 2004. They nest on cliffs close to glaciers or small islands for protection from predators and feed on various plants, grains and leftover crops in fields over winter.
The Pink-footed Goose is a medium-sized goose that is 60-75 cm long with a wingspan of 135-170 cm and weighs 1.8-3.4 kg. It has a short bill that is pink in the middle with a black base and tip, and pink feet. Populations have risen significantly over the last 50 years due to increased legal protections, with numbers in Great Britain rising almost tenfold to 292,000 in 2004. They nest on cliffs close to glaciers or small islands for protection from predators and feed on various plants, grains and leftover crops in fields over winter.
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The Pink-footed Goose is a medium-sized goose that is 60-75 cm long with a wingspan of 135-170 cm and weighs 1.8-3.4 kg. It has a short bill that is pink in the middle with a black base and tip, and pink feet. Populations have risen significantly over the last 50 years due to increased legal protections, with numbers in Great Britain rising almost tenfold to 292,000 in 2004. They nest on cliffs close to glaciers or small islands for protection from predators and feed on various plants, grains and leftover crops in fields over winter.
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It is a medium-sized goose, 6075 cm (2430 in) long, the wingspan 135170 (5367 in) cm, and weighing 1.83.
4 kg (47.5 lbs). It has a short bill, bright pink in the middle with a black base and tip, and pink feet . There are two largely discrete populations of Pink-footed Goose. The Greenland and Iceland population winter in Great Britain, while the Svalbard population winters in the Netherlands and Denmark, with small numbers also inNorway (where it is common on migration), northern Germany, and Belgium. Populations have risen spectacularly over the last 50 years, due largely to increased protection from shooting on the wintering grounds. Numbers wintering in Great Britain have risen almost tenfold from 30,000 in 1950 to 292,000 in October 2004. The numbers wintering in Denmark and the Netherlands have also risen, with about 34,000 in 1993. The most important single breeding site, at jrsrver in Iceland (holding 10,700 pairs in 1970), was only discovered in 1951, by Sir Peter Scott and his team who made an expedition to seek the breeding grounds. Within Great Britain, the most important wintering areas are in Norfolk (147,000 in 2004), Lancashire (44,000 in 2004), and Aberdeenshire (primarily on autumn and spring passage). Large to huge wintering flocks graze on farmland; individual flocks can be spectacular, such as the 66,000 at Loch of Strathbeg, Aberdeenshire in early September 2003 Nesting is often on cliffs close to glaciers to provide protection from mammalian predators (mainly Arctic Fox), also on islets in lakes. Three to six eggs are laid in early to mid May in Iceland, late May in Svalbard, with incubation lasting 2627 days. On hatching, the goslings accompany the parents on foot to the learest lake, where they fledge after about 56 days. Southbound migration is from mid September to [2] early October, and northbound from mid April to early May. The diet is almost entirely vegetarian. In summer, they feed on a wide range of tundra plants, both on land and in water. In winter, they graze primarily on oilseed rape, sugar beet, potato, and various grasses; damage to crops can be extensive, though their grazing can also benefit particularly sugar beet and potato farmers by gleaning leaves and roots left behind after the crop is harvested, reducing the [2] transmission of crop diseases from one year to the next.
