Goose numbers soaring

Top wet season triggers perfect breeding conditions for magpie geese

THE result of a perfect wet season will be prolific breeding by magpie geese on the Top End flood plains.

My contacts in Kakadu told me as early as February that the geese were nesting. This is supported by my son observing a clutch of goslings crossing the Arnhem highway near the new road construction on the Adelaide River flood plain just two weeks ago.

So, it appears that we have already experienced three months of breeding.

The population was estimated to be 1.4m birds in 2020 and most of those will now be sexually mature adult birds.

I would expect upwards of 100,000 nests with these conditions.

Dr Tim Clancy informed me that the average survival rate to maturity of goslings per nest was 4.5, so that should put at least about another 450,000 geese in the air this year.

I expect he and the team will be commencing the aerial survey in the next week or so, if they haven’t already. They should be over water and nests as they dip down to 60m above the surface on the first transect over the Finniss River flood plain.

I just hope they recognise the early nests built in February and by now vacated by the parents and fledglings in search of food.

The last survey I was on in 2017, no one would believe me that below us were recently vacated nests until a day later the fledglings were seen running through shallow water and grass.

We flew over thousands of these early breeding season nests that weren’t counted by the boffins, but that year contributed to a recruitment of nearly 250,000 birds.

Not only should we have ideal recruitment, but our resident flocks from the regions will have had no need to chase water across the borders.

I don’t expect many of our birds that abandoned the Territory a few years ago to return yet as La Nina has put good rainfall over most of the country and they are living it up in Queensland, Western Australia and as far south as Victoria.