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Russian White-fronts (1 Viewer)

Andy Adcock

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Cyprus
Can anyone tell me if Russian Greater White-fronted Geese, take a different return migration route?

In autumn, I see thousands, they fly over my patch in an almost straight East-West direction but I never see them in spring coming back?
 
Can anyone tell me if Russian Greater White-fronted Geese, take a different return migration route?

In autumn, I see thousands, they fly over my patch in an almost straight East-West direction but I never see them in spring coming back?
If you look at page 55 of this Dutch article: https://www.sovon.nl/sites/default/files/doc/Rap_2014-56_Kolganzen_beheer.pdf (there's a large summary in English at the end), there's a map showing the fouraging locations of the Dutch Russian White-fronts. They migrate over a broad front, mostly (far) south of St Petersburg. Unfortunately, they don't show the autumn migration!

Migration tends to be really concentrated where I live: if I miss the right day (or if they leave at night) I only see a few 100 in the entire spring, whereas I have seen >20,000 in a day once! In autumn, they arrive a bit more spread out.

Russian White-fronts from Hungary migrate much further to the south (through Kazakhstan), as shown on page 15 (so you definitely won't see these).
 
At the moment, there are a lot of GWf geese in the fields of southeast Finland.

Andy, aren't you still not seen those on that side of border?
 
At the moment, there are a lot of GWf geese in the fields of southeast Finland.

Andy, aren't you still not seen those on that side of border?

I'm in the UK as from 7th April but no, haven't seen a single one this spring which is why I asked if they go back a different way.

As I said in the OP, in autumn, birds would be coming over me from an inland direction, flying almost exactly East - West but none, absolutely none, have been seen coming back that way?
 
Definitely, you should visit Russia if you love swans. I saw there many wonderful birds during my travel. Moreover, I visited many parks during my st petersburg walking tour. There are large lakes with a lot of beautiful swans in these great parks. I was also lucky to see black swans for the first time in my life. It is a pity I had to сome out quickly.
 
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Definitely, you should visit Russia if you love swans. I saw there many wonderful birds during my travel. Moreover, I visited many parks during my st petersburg walking tour. There are large lakes with a lot of beautiful swans in these great parks. I was also lucky to see black swans for the first time in my life. It is a pity I had to сome out quickly.

No idea where this might be, in several years there, I've only ever seen migrant Swans and of course Black Swan is Australian so that will be a captive bird in a collection.

I'm not aware of any collections such as this within the City so would be very curious to know where you went?
 
Getting back to the original question, I saw absolutely thousands of White-fronts in Estonia last week. Comfortably the most numerous goose in most places I went.
 
Getting back to the original question, I saw absolutely thousands of White-fronts in Estonia last week. Comfortably the most numerous goose in most places I went.

That may be Andrew but I just think that wherever my birds leave from in autumn, they seem not to return the same way, I'm not saying they're absent.

My birds come from the East somewhere in autumn so maybe, on the return journey, they track East from a point South of where I see them or even North of me, they don't take the same route back as far as I can tell?
 
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