18 September: Steve races down to Lindisfarne

Steve beats them all again. Just as in spring, where he flew almost non-stop to Svalbard, he also made a very fast flight at least from Lofoten down to Lindisfarne. The pictured flight of 1889 km started west of Lofoten at 17 September at 08:00 and ended in Lindisfarne on 18 September at 21:00, thus took 37 hours with an average speed of 51 km/hour

15 September: Ebbe and Loff flying in to United Kingdom

The transmitters batteries obviously benefits from the birds flying south to better insolation regimes, where the solar panels can restore their voltage. Thus the PTTs of Ebbe and Caretaker both began to collect GPS locations when they had migrated south to 63°N. The maps shows their routes over the eastern Atlantic and North Sea where Ebbe settled at Lindisfarne, whereas Caretaker surprisingly flew over Lindisfarne and continued further north to Firth of Forth near the Bay of Leven. Ebbe followed a route near the Norway coast whereas Caretaker followed a route over the open ocean.

12 September: four birds still on Svalbard

Four birds are still located on Svalbard, but now in the southern parts of the archipelago. The upper map shows how Fridtjof who resided on Reinsdyrflya 9 September during 12 September flew south towards Nordenskiöldkysten. The lower map gives the same overall movement for Steve, although he took a slightly different route. Loff is still at Van Mijenfjorden (upper map) and Niels at Edgeøya near Kap Lee (lower map). Maps reproduced with permission from Norwegian Polar Institute using TopoSvalbard

12 September: Caretaker first bird heading south

Our study has over the past few weeks suffered increasingly from depleted batteries, and all transmitters stopped collecting GPS locations. We thus only recieve doppler-data every third day, when the transmitters uplink to the satellites. Fortunately Caretaker flew south over the Barents Sea on such a day, and the upper part of the map shows his flight from Svalbard to Lofoten on 9 September. The lower part shows his further movements on 10-12 September, when the transmitter resumed collecting GPS locations.

3 September: Caretaker jumps to Svalbard

We haven’t been reporting on Caretaker since July due to the fact that he spent all his time, also after moult, on Prinsesse Thyra Ø in Greenland. Like with the other geese we also have problems with low voltages in the PTTs battery, and thus only gets doppler positions every third day. 31 August he was still on his island in Greenland but this morning he had moved east to Svalbard and was located in Van Mijenfjorden on the south slopes of Sundevalltoppen. Map reproduced with permission from Norwegian Polar Institute using TopoSvalbard