PERILS OF BARNACLE GEESE GOSLINGS

      Barnacle geese are interesting for where they hatch goslings- high on rocky cliffs in northeast Greenland, Spitzbergen Island and northwest Siberia.  They do that to keep their eggs and newly-hatched goslings away from Arctic foxes, Arctic wolves and polar bears.  But the geese and their goslings have no food on those cliffs.  Therefore, the goslings must leap off those cliffs and drop to the grassy tundra below.

     On the tundra, at the bases of the cliffs, each pair of barnacle geese call to their three or four goslings to take the plunge, which they do.  One after another, the goslings leap off their nurseries and bounce and tumble off boulders down the faces of the cliffs to their rocky bottoms.  There the surviving goslings join their parents to march to nearby patches of grass close to water to feed on that grass.  

     Most of those fuzzy-gray, camouflaged youngsters survive their fall, but some do not, and are picked up and eaten by glaucous gulls, foxes, wolves or bears.  The goslings are light in weight and have flexible bones and bodies, which helps most of them survive their perilous fall to food and life.  

     Each adult barnacle goose is about 26 inches long, which is about the size of mallard ducks.  Each attractive goose has a black neck and chest and a white face.  And it has attractive silvery and black-barred feathering on its back and upper wing feathers.  Barnacle geese are related to the well-known Canada geese, in the Branta genus.    

     Maybe because of geographic isolation, at some point in the past, barnacle geese became their own species, but with some traits of their Branta genus.  Perhaps a few pairs of them began nesting on cliffs in the high Arctic to escape ground predators, and the species increased in numbers from that.  But the poor goslings must take a leap of faith or starve high on those rocky cliffs.  What a way to start life.  

     Most barnacle geese winter in Europe.  Only a few do so in North America, and then with other kinds of geese for safety in numbers.  

     Barnacle geese are attractive and interesting, especially in the way they hatch goslings.  Readers can see goslings tumbling down rocky cliffs via videos online about barnacle geese.     

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