Soft landings
Today we drove to the bird hide at the Breebaart Polder. I also wanted to get some pix of the yellow rapeseed fields against a blue sky. Yesterday’s pix didn’t turn out very nice: yellow against grey. We saw lots of Barnacle geese at the bird hide. They usually leave the Netherlands around this time of year, although some do breed here now too.
From Wikipedia: ‘Barnacle Geese breed mainly on the Arctic islands of the North Atlantic. They frequently build their nests high on mountain cliffs; away from predators (primarily Arctic Foxes and Polar Bears) but also away from food. Like all geese, the goslings are not fed by the adults. Instead of bringing food to the newly hatched goslings, the goslings are brought to the ground. Unable to fly, the three day old goslings jump off the cliff and fall; their small size, feathery down, and very light weight helps to protect some of them from serious injury when they hit the rocks below, but many die from the impact’.
Maybe this is why more and more Barnacle geese stay in the Netherlands to breed 
Check
for cool bird pix.
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