Red-breasted goose

Voice

High, shrill and hurried, quite unlike the baying of grey geese: a disyllabic, slightly squeaky kik-wik or kee-kwik, becoming a shrill chorus from a flock. In the Netherlands it is heard mainly as a mixed goose flock lifts, and the call often betrays the bird before it is picked out.

Identification

Small and short-necked, with a rusty-red cheek patch framed in white, a chestnut neck and breast cut off by a white flank line, and otherwise black with a white rear. A white spot between bill and eye is the best long-range mark. First-winters are duller, with weaker white lines and pale covert fringes.

Confusion species

No other European goose shows the chestnut, but a Brent Goose in poor light can mislead at long range. Brent, though, is uniformly dark on head and breast and shows no white on the face at all. Escaped Red-breasted Geese are frequent: check for rings, worn feathers and unnatural tameness.

Habitat

Winters on steppe grassland, winter cereals and stubble fields, always within reach of a large lake or reservoir used as a roost. In the Netherlands it feeds on polder grassland and winter wheat among other geese. Breeds on Siberian tundra at Taimyr and Gydan, characteristically beside Peregrine or Rough-legged Buzzard nests.

Range and movements

Breeds only in northern Siberia and winters almost entirely on the western Black Sea coast in Bulgaria and Romania. Small numbers stray to western Europe; a handful reach the Netherlands each winter, mostly in Friesland, the Flevo polders and Zeeland. In Spain it is an exceptional vagrant.

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

Where and when to look

Work the classic goose areas from December to February: the Frisian wet grasslands, the Ooijpolder and the Zeeland polders. Drive or walk the dykes in late morning when flocks feed quietly, and grind through every White-fronted Goose flock with a scope; the bird only stands out in side view.

Conservation status

The world population is small and the trend worrying, with the birds packed onto a few Black Sea roosts and therefore extremely vulnerable. Changing crops, hunting pressure, disturbance and wind farms along the flyway are the main threats, while on the tundra the decline of protective raptor nests reduces breeding success.