Many young do not make it, but for the ones that do, you can’t help but admire their resilience and bravery! © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society, © 2015- When the winter rolls around, and grasses are less abundant, they will move into the coastal mud flats to feed on seaweed, mollusks, and other aquatic invertebrates. Tens of thousands of geese make an annual pilgrimage there to, among other things, feed on grass. In it, he described how Irish churchmen would eat the barnacle geese during fasts because “these birds [are] not flesh nor being born of the flesh”, for “they are born at first like pieces of gum on logs of timber washed by the waves. Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by WordPress. Filmmakers record the extreme rite of passage of barnacle goslings as they plummet over 120m down a cliff face. âYou have to track this small gray object against gray brown rocks at very fast speeds, and as soon as hits something, it changes direction.â, Willis explains that itâs easy to become a little inured to biological hardships after filming natural history scenes for years. To get to the grassâand the water, where they are more protected from predatorsâthe birds must plummet from their high-altitude nests following their parents. Geese have what is known as precocial young, which means they are born alert and ready to move under their own power and can feed themselves. Where did the name come from? Once they find a suitable partner, they can stay with them for life. âItâs one of those cases where you wait, and you wait, and you wait,â Willis says. If they make it down successfully or survive any predators, in about 45 days they can fly on their own. It is a feat that can only be appreciated by watching it yourself! That being said, this harsh strategy âobviously works well enough,â he adds. And so the myth was born, and the name has stuck ever since. . This has significantly reduced the gooseâs population, which had been rising since the 1960s. The Svalbard population has around 24,000 birds who winter on the Solway Firth on the England/Scotland border and breed on Svalbard. Barnacle geese are mostly vegetarian. At the end of August and September, each separate population begins migrating to their breeding grounds to form colonies to provide safety in numbers. Why day-old geese jump off cliffsâand how some survive. Regardless of gender, barnacle geese all have a white face, white belly, and a black head, neck, and upper chest. Barnacle geese are not alone in their tumbles, though they are the bird worldâs most dramatic. However, thanks mainly to predators like foxes and birds of prey, only about half or fewer make it to young adulthood, completing the journey to their wintering groundsâprimarily the Scottish island of Islay. They begin courting each other by leaping, flapping their wings, and vocalizing together. Compared with that, the barnacle geese in Hostile Planet were lucky, as one of their offspring survivedâand with luck, it will pair up and return to Greenland to have goslings of its own. The low nests are close to food, but are at risk from predators. âYour nerves are in tatters,â he says, running on âhardly any sleepââand all of a sudden you have to capture this stunning fall. Join our mailing list to receive the latest stories and updates! ], âThis is one of those instances where you couldnât help but feel sympathy for those chicks,â he says. But this strategy has a drawback: To start their lives, young geese must survive a harrowing fallâsometimes hundreds of feet. If the chicks bounce on their fluffy bellies on the way down, they are more likely to survive the impacts. As seasoned natural history filmmakers, the team are used to recording the behaviour of predators and prey but described witnessing one group of chicks snatched by an arctic fox as “bleak”. To get the shot, Willis and his team had to be ready and alert for much of this time. The barnacle goose is a medium-sized goose with a wingspan of around 4.5 feet and weighs about 5 pounds. Producer Tom Hugh-Jones described the experience of filming in the extreme Greenland location as a “classic, old-school filming trip”. Because of this, the people of 12th century Scotland and Europe never witnessed the birds reproduce, and never saw any young goslings. “You’re sort of impressed by how they manage to get down there, I guess you could call it the courage of these chicks. The chick’s death-defying tumble is … âItâs a challenging shot,â he adds. It took director Mateo Willis three weeks to capture this scene, which is featured in the new National Geographic Channel show Hostile Planet. Discussing the vulnerable chicks’ seeming unsuitability to their predicament, Tom explained that the birds have a lot to contend with. Barnacle geese nest hundreds of feet up to avoid predators such as Arctic foxes. Regardless of gender, barnacle geese all have a white face, white belly, and a black head, neck, and upper chest. All rights reserved. Then enclosed in shells of a free form they hang by their beaks as if from the moss clinging to the wood and so at length in process of time obtaining a sure covering of feathers, they either dive off into the waters or fly away into free air.
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