Sir,
Readers may recall a letter of mine to the Observer in the spring, about the presence on Penally beach and nearby, of a small flock of pale-breasted Brent geese, which remained here for a few weeks. Wales is not a regular site for this species.
On September 22, I was agreeably surprised to see 17 of the same geese on the same stretch of beach. They were there at 7.30 am and still in the same area in the late afternoon, sometimes feeding on the beach vegetation or floating on the sea close in to the shore.
Pale-breasted Brent geese are one of two Brent geese sub-species that winter in the British Isles, the other being the dark-breasted Brent. The pale-breasted live in two distinct populations, one breeding in N. Greenland and N. E. Canada, and wintering in Ireland, while the other breeds in Spitzbergen and the Franz Joseph Islands, and winters in Denmark and N. E. England, i.e. Northumberland. To which of these populations our visitors belong it it impossible to be sure, but those wintering in Ireland seem the more likely.
Not only is it highly unusual to see these birds at this locality, but they are here a full month earlier than one would expect to see the first arrivals either in Ireland or Northumberland.
Can we expect that pale-breasted Brents become regular winter visitors or at least passage migrants to Pembrokeshire? Hopefully their winter visitors will at least last for more years than did those of the barnacle geese that come to the Marloes Mere area for a few winters some years back.
Michael Higgins,
Penally,
PS. Geese best viewed at low tide.