Geese

There are about 30 000 Barnacle geese spending their winters in Scotland. In the spring, these birds fly north, ending up to Svalbard in May. At that time, there is still a lot of snow, and only a few places available to find food from. One of these is Vårsolbukta... There, the geese try to eat themselves fatter after the long flight, before settling to sit on their eggs. But how do they do this? What is mostly available for the geese is moss, which again is not so nutritious to feed on... So what they do, is to hunt down the little grass leaves that dare to stick their head on top of the moss layer. They seem to be able to detect the bigger grasses more easily (surprise!), especially those that have "large" leaves left from previous year. So, they search the grasses that can be seen, and using the energy and nutrients from these they can continue migration to the nesting sites.

This is what I studied in my master thesis, and which information is finally available at the website of Polar Research in the form of a scientific article for those who are interested. Maybe no findings that are going to change the world... but maybe we understand better how the interplay between in general herbivores and plants, and in particular the geese and the arctic plants works...

And after this chapter has been finished now properly, I started a new one: the practises of the capoeira group in Rimouski are heavy sport, but just the correct type for someone who lives in a flat place but wants to be able to go up mountains this winter. And capoeira is fun!