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Wildfowl Trust captured a handful of birds and began an
intensive breeding campaign. By hatching the eggs under
broody hens, each goose laid far more eggs than would
normally be possible, thus increasing the population
to over 2,000 birds. The success is not, however,
absolute, because in the absence of natural selection,
and numbers too small for the Trust to be selective in
breeding, certain bad as well as good characteristics
have been inherited by the whole Ne-Ne population. The
worst of these nutations is an insufficiency of down
on newly hatched birds. Their resistance to cold, and
therefore their survival capacity is decreased. Breeding
experiments continue, to rid the bird of this
characteristic.
Wandering around the grounds we were able to see
many exotic and rare wildfowl. Trumpeter Swans performed
for us, reminding me of Boys Brigade bugle practice.
Whistling Ducks, well, they sort of whistled
On both long coach journeys, Ron Allen kept us
amused by asking us to count the Kestrels hovering over
motorway verges. The Y.O.C. had carried out a project
to see how common these falcons are, hunting along
motorways. They averaged about one Kestrel to 2,3 miles
of motorway.
We counted 16 Kestrels over 84 miles of motorway.
That is about one Kestrel for every five miles of verge.
Why they choose to hunt over motorway verges rather than
adjacent fields, is still a matter of some debate, but
it has been suggested that it is something to do with
the vibrations of the motorway vehicles causing the
mammals to dwell above ground.
On behalf of all who attended, I would like to
thank Kevin and Ron for a very enjoyable outing.
Ian Misselbrook.