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If you plan on getting up to Castle Espie to see the annual arrival of the Light-bellied Brent Geese, you’d better wing it. They’ve arrived early this year. By the first week in September more than 5,000 of these long-distance flyers had landed at Strangford Lough, having bypassed their normal stopover in Iceland.
Taking this route is an unusual occurrence. According to the Wetland and Wildlife Trust, which runs the centre at Castle Espie, it is most likely due to strong tail winds that carried them all the way from Greenland, where they’d normally layover to fatten up before the last leg of the journey. By the same time last year only 300 had turned up.
Some 90 per cent of the world’s population of Light-bellied Brent Geese come to Strangford Lough every autumn, where they feed on the vast expanses of eelgrass exposed at low water. These birds take on the largest migration journey of any goose, travelling a whopping 4,500km in their annual journey from Ireland to the Canadian High Arctic and back.
Brent Geese numbers at the lough normally increase gradually from early September and peak in mid-October. A record number landed last year, before disbursing around the country.
It’s a sight not to be missed and Castle Espie’s recently upgraded Brent Hide offers the best vantage point on the lough, right in front of Arrivals. There’s also a wide variety of other wildfowl and waders, including shelduck, shoveler, redshank, godwit and plover, so there are always plenty of comings and goings, but few who have made such an epic journey to get here.