Bird of the week

This is the time of year when most greylag geese are flightless; goslings are too young to fly and their parents have dropped their main wing feathers as part of the annual moult. For these few weeks, birds are constrained to lakeside grassland and fields, slipping into the water if there is a sign of danger. Greylag geese breed just about everywhere these days, apart from across south-west

England, yet if we look back just 50 years there were very few in England or Wales, and these were in areas close to introduction sites. As Tim Sharrock

reported in the 19681972 Breeding Bird

Atlas: “By 1970 WAGBI [Wildfowlers’ Association of Great Britain and Ireland] had released 938 hand-reared greylags at 333 sites in 13 English and Welsh counties.”

I wonder if members of WAGBI (now BASC) could have envisaged what would happen? It would be interesting to know how many birds there are now.