Greylag Goose

Voice

Loud and unmistakably farmyard: a deep cackling aahng-ahng-ahng. On take-off a fast rattling clamour, audible day and night over winter roosts. Softer conversational murmurs pass between pair members all year, and the whole voice is noticeably deeper than that of White-fronted Goose.

Identification

Heavy, thickset grey goose with a stout, uniformly orange-pink bill in the western form and pink legs. The strikingly pale grey forewing shows above and below in flight, a panel no other grey goose matches. Older birds show variable black belly blotches; juveniles are plainer, duller and unmarked below.

Confusion species

White-fronted Goose is smaller and darker, with a white bill base and black belly bars; Bean and Tundra Bean Geese have dark bills with an orange band and orange legs. When in doubt, take the pale forewing plus the heavy unmarked bill together, because only Greylag combines them.

Habitat

Breeds in reedbeds, clay pits, restored wetlands and rank waterside vegetation. Outside the breeding season it feeds on grassland, winter cereals and the leftovers of sugar beet and maize, roosting on open water or shallow floods a safe distance from any dyke or road.

Range and movements

Breeds from Iceland and Scotland east to Central Asia. The Netherlands is both a breeding area and an important wintering ground for northern birds. In Spain it is above all a winter spectacle at Doñana and the lagoons of Villafáfila, while the breeding population there stays small.

• Resident
• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

October to February at first light is the moment: flocks leave the roost for the fields and you hear them long before you see them. Stand on a polder dyke with the wind in your face. In April, families with downy goslings betray themselves along reed edges.

Conservation status

Strongly increased in north-west Europe thanks to protection, wetter reserves and nutrient-rich farmland, turning a rare breeder into a resident. The downside is crop damage and continuing argument about management and culling. In parts of southern Europe the breeding population has remained scarce.