Breeding season rumours 2026
Based on predictions made from the connection between grey-sided vole abundance variation and breeding success of Lessers, the 2026 is expected to be a low year, with more broods this year than last, but less than 10. Few failed breeders were seen during the breeding bird survey, but quite many pairs have returned to the Valdak Marshes the last few days, a start of the moult migration of failed and non-breeders. A flock of eight birds with young, one-year olds, and single adults have been present at the marshes throughout late may - early June, and now also the first seven adult pairs have come down from the breeding areas, including the neck gps-gsm neck banded male Blue-Red. We still have hope for an average production, and a peak year in 2027.
18 June 2026 by Tomas Aarvak BirdLife Norway
Winter movements in Greece!
In the evening of December 2, a part of the Fennoscandian flock wintering in Greece, moved from Kerkini to the Evros Delta as given by the tracking data from the male Blue-Red. In Evros there are now at least 74 Lessers. The female Blue-Black is still in Kerkini with a smalller number of birds.
13 December 2025 by Ingar J. Øien & Tomas Aarvak BirdLife Norway
Spring migration 2025 for the two GPS-tagged Lesser white-fronts
The GPS-neckbands on the female (blue/black) and the male (blue/red) worked well through the spring migration. The male started from the wintering site in Kerkini, Greece on 14th March and the female on 20th March. The map shows migratory paths with stopover sites and dates for both birds (red line=female & white line=male). Now in midsummer, they are both in the breeding area in Finnmark, Northern Norway. Unfortunately, the lemming/vole populations in the breeding area are at the bottom of the 4–5-year cycle, so we expect very few LWfG pairs to breed successfully this year. Therefore, onset of moult migration to Siberia is expected in a couple of weeks for most of the Fennoscandian population.
23 June 2025 by Tomas Aarvak & Ingar Jostein Øien BirdLife Norway
Active GPS-transmitters & spring migration
On 22 May 2024, BirdLife Norway instrumented three new Lesser White-fronted Geese with gps-gsm neck bands. One was soon afterwards predated, but the two others are still working fine as of today. Both are in Lake Kerkini in Greece, where they have been since November 2024. In 2024 the spring migration started on 15th March, so still a few more weeks before any larger movements are expected. As a note, the bird mrs. Kerkini that was caught and tagged in spring 2023, was probably shot in eastern Türkiye in October last autumn, on her way to wintering in Greece.
19 February 2025 by Ingar Jostein Øien & Tomas Aarvak BirdLife Norway
Fennoscandian 2023 live migration tracking
On 20th May 2023, a pair of Lesser White-fronted Goose was caught with cannon net at the Valdak marshes, Porsanger Norway. Both were instrumented with 17gr solar powered gps-gsm neck bands provide by Druidtech. We’ve followed them through the breeding season, and after they came down to the Porsangen fjord as their first staging area on the autumn migration. The pair came down with 4 goslings, which is more or less the average production this year.
13 September 2023 by Ingar Jostein Øien & Tomas Aarvak BirdLife Norway