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First catch in 2026 | 25 July 2026 |
We start the day at 9:00 with an explanation for all people involved, how we work and what everyone must do, when we try to get the geese caught. I have made a simple drawing from the situation at the catching pen. | |
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It worked, we have caught a nice group of 73 geese.
Now we wait for 2 hours and let the geese defaecate. If we start ringinging earlier, it will be a very filthy operation and we can infect the geese with faeces transmitted diseases.
After two hours, we start filling 17 boxes with a goose, so we can process geese and leave the pen quiet. In the picture to the right, Douwe has grabbed a goose and places it in a small box to be weighted. Jelle is weighing a box and places it between the legs of Maarten. Maarten takes the goose out of the box, and Jelle weighs the empty box. If the goose is unringed, Maarten rings the goose with a metal bird ring from Stavanger Museum and a self made colour ring with a three letter inscription. Maarten reads the metal ring number and the colour code and measures the total tarsus, the 9th and longest growing primary feather: p9, the midwing and the head. After those measurement, we take swabs via the mouth and the cloaca, which will be tested for sick birds in the flock. After the swabs, we take 1 ml of blood out of the wing, to test for antibodies and pollution. After this, we release the goose into the fjord.It is no problem releasing them one by one as we have caught only adult geese and they will find eachother quickly. The whole operation started with a two motorboats and two kayaks at 09:30. We caught the geese on 10:45 and started ringing at 13:00. Processing time for each goose after taking it out of the box was 6 minutes. The last geese was released at 19:11. A highlight: we have caught a rare colour morph in the population: a leucistic goose. Fully white, but not an albino. The eyes are black and some small feathers have a black line. What a beautiful bird. It has rings now and we call it yellow DAB. To the right our goose grabber Douwe. |
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 Processing a goose.  Auriane is putting a swab in the mouth of the goose, Sander is making notes.   The end of the geese, with the last goose yDDB on a group photo. Fieke Rader made all pictures.  From left to right: Jelle Rijntjes, Maarten Loonen (dirty trouser), Douwe Hoekstra, Sander Heijnens and Auriane Herbaut. Thanks to them and all people who were involved in this operation or showed interest in our work. Now we have to break down the net and clean all material. | |
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| 20260723, 13:00 | 20260725, 12:00 | all items shown with small pics | |||||
| building the catch pen | first catch in 2026 |