Lena – the last of our red-breasted geese to keep on transmitting has reappeared recently and provided more information on her whereabouts during the winter. The last transmission has been from early December last year and now we have a full story of where she has been.
As you might remember in early November 2023 she arrived Veselovskoe reservoir (Rostov region, Russia) from northern Kazakhstan and as the GPS transmitter indicates she has spent the winter entirely in southern Russia. She stayed in Veselovskoe reservoir till late December, when she eventually moved towards Manych Lake in Kalmykia.
Lena has been equipped with collar tag in May 2022 and in the winter of 2022/2023 she staged in the area of Sivash Lake near Crimea. It is believed that some around 20,000 redbreasts have spent the winter there. This winter she chose to spend the winter even further east in Russia.
She is now in the area where most of the redbreasts will be later this spring in Manych Lake area preparing for the way back to the Arctic.
The remote tracking of the red-breasted geese provides invaluable information about the movement of the birds and their staging areas and flyway corridors. In recent years this is quite valuable information that supports both the on the ground monitoring work and the conservation efforts especially with the huge outburst of investment proposals for windfarms in core areas of the species winter quarters.
Anyone interested in the species could check on the movements of all tagged birds on our project website – https://savebranta.org/transmiters
