Cannon-netting Brent Geese

Enniscrone Golf Club, 14th February 2008

	Image © Gerard Scott 2008
14th February 2008:  The morning was marked by several frustrating "near misses", when the flock landed and took off without settling, or landed outside the 'target area' - marked out by sods to the right of the hut in this photo.

	Image © Gerard Scott 2008
14th February 2008:  The Irish Brent Goose Research Group visited Enniscrone Golf Club with the hope of catching a good number of our wintering Brent Geese to ring them.  This sequence of photos, taken in a high-speed burst by Gerard Scott, show the cannons firing the projectiles, which carry the nets out over the goose flock.  151 geese were captured in a single firing of the net, a record catch for the group.

	Image © Mícheál Casey 2008
14th February 2008:  The huge catch of Brent Geese was processed over the next two hours - each bird was placed in a canvas bag to keep it calm until it could be weighed, measured, blood sampled (for DNA profiling) and swabbed for Avian Influenza testing.  The payback for all this effort be at least a decade's worth of data, as these ringed birds are observed and tracked on their wintering grounds in Ireland, in their breeding grounds in arctic Canada, and on their marathon migration routes in between.

	Image © Gerard Scott 2008
14th February 2008:  Each goose has two colour coded rings each bearing a single letter, in uniquie combinations.  These rings can be read through binoculars or telescopes.

	Image © Gerard Scott 2008
14th February 2008:  The geese are released together at the end of the operation, so that family groups, which may have been trapped together, are released together,