Goosander Gains

 All too often my posts lament the decline of a species or the disappearance from my patch and so, for a change, I thought I would look at one species that is doing increasingly well.

The Goosander is a saw-billed duck which has become more common on my patch over the past few years. Traditionally I never considered the river Avon in Warwick to be a suitable location but that has changed. Unlike their close cousin the Merganser they prefer rivers to estuaries and coasts. Normally found inn Wales and in the north their range is extending south.

These interesting birds are an intermediary size between a duck and a goose and like ducks are sexually dimorphic. The males have striking white plumage with a bottle green head, whilst the female is greyer with a striking rusty tufted head. They sport hooked beaks and rearward placed webbed feet that make the excellent divers.

Male Goosander note the dark salmon beak and bright red legs.

Females sit lower in the water than males. They have striking rusty head with a mullet like crest at the back of the head.

Female Goosander taking flight, showing diagnostic red legs and white wing bars with black tips

Goosander feed mostly on fish and aquatic invertebrates, diving deep below the surface for some time and distance. I watch one this morning and it made short forays underwater between 15 and 20 seconds long.

I saw my first Goosander in 1998 on the river by Tan-y-bwlch at Aberystwyth, I had expected it to be a Merganser which I often saw off the coast of west Wales but on close examination I realised its true identity.

Goosander are mainly a Scandinavian species with its first confirmed breeding in the UK in Scotland in 1871. Slowly there range expanded with most of this growth occurring from the 1960's up to the mid-1990's whence numbers fell slightly to the numbers of 1990. In this area they are traditionally a winter visiting species, moving south and east in search of fish however between 2017 and 2022 there was an 8% increase in the number of individuals.

Heywood, J.J.N., Massimino, D., Balmer, D.E., Kelly, L., Marion, S., Noble, D.G., Pearce-Higgins, J.W., White, D.M., Woodcock, P., Wotton, S. Gillings, S. (2024) The Breeding Bird Survey 2023. BTO Research Report 765. British Trust for Ornithology, Thetford.

My first local sighting of a Goosander was on New Waters at Warwick Castle Park in 2007 during a Heronries census. As for my patch I first recorded Goosander in 2009, these early sighting were usually of females who tended to flock together in the winter. 

Goosander sightings on my patch. So far in 2025 (Jan-Feb) there have been 8 individuals sighted over 7 one hour visits.

These sightings were all between November and March however in July 2024 a female with 13 young were recorded. These all appeared fledged and so could fly but indicate that Goosander could be breeding on the Warwickshire Avon, most likely at New Waters where their is abundant woodland and riverside trees. They nest in tree holes or under boulders. The current breeding population in the UK is 4800 pairs and Warwickshire is right on the edge of their current breeding range.

Adult female Goosander with young recorded on my patch in July 2024

It is hoped that this year more young will be seen and that breeding can be confirmed along this stretch of the Warwickshire Avon.

Highs and Lows

This blogpost has turned out very differently from how I had imagined it but that is the vagaries of nature conservation and life itself, the ups and downs.

Last week my patch experienced some severe flooding, rain, snow and then frost swelled the river significantly. Not as high as last year’s winter floods I was nevertheless worried for the safety of my cameras and Otter Cam in particular.

With some trepidation I slowly counted off my cameras until I reached Otter Cam, to my disappointment the camera and even the post it was attached to was gone.  I feared it had been lost for ever but conducted a search. I wasn’t entirely optimistic, the heavy log that the otters like to spraint on had been lifted from the floor and was now lodged on a branch about half a metre above the ground. In a stroke of amazing luck I managed to spot the fence post which the camera had been attached to. It was lodged in a pile of flotsam and jetsam against a large tree. I pulled it free and was pleased to see the camera still attached although now it was coated in broken up undergrowth and thick with frost.

I removed the camera, apart from frozen it looked intact. I cleaned the lens and removed the detritus. It didn’t look wet inside, mainly because it was frozen. I knew the batteries would be shot and so I replaced them and then with great trepidation turned it on. It worked. Not only did it still work it continued to record the whole time.

I was amazed, this camera was not one of the high end Bushnells, Reconyx or the like but a much cheaper Gardepro A3S that I had bought of Amazon at a fraction of the price. I was already impressed by the quality of the camera and now I was bowled over. I recorded a clip and even wrote to tell Gardepro how pleased I was. I really would recommend this company. The device is as good as any of the higher spec models by other makers and I have got some great footage using them.

I was conscious however that one of the reasons it had survived was the severe frost. The water ingress had not had time to rust the contacts, so I purchased another camera to replace it and take that one back for some TLC and to act as my back up camera.

Today with this new camera I went down to do the swap out and make sure the camera was set up correctly, disappointingly however when I got there the camera was gone. Nowhere to be seen. I had noticed some footprints that weren’t my own on my private land, but as long as people do not cause trouble I don’t mind too much, but my camera was gone as was the bracket that attached it to the fence post.

This sort of loss is to be expected, people are sadly people, and I had left the camera unprotected in what I thought was a discrete and out of the way place. I commiserated with a fellow cam user on the Mammal Society Facebook page when he lost a camera and pointed out that for me it was not really the loss of the camera, expensive yes, but cameras can be replaced, it was the loss of data that got me most. I would rather them have the camera and leave the SD card. It’s probably the scientist in me but the loss of seven days of information is gutting. I am at present working on analyzing 10 years of data for my main camera in a hedgerow and I know how much every capture means to drawing reasonable conclusions.

So instead of an uplifting tale of the little camera that could we have a melancholy ending in which I am now going to have to spend out on python locks, padlocks, new brackets and find a safe location that still fits the methodology I am using, and in the process have lost at least 2 weeks of data.

This is the tenth camera I have lost and the fourth that has been stolen. I doubt it will be the last which will be lost to theft or vandalism. I need to be philosophical and focus on the amazing things I have seen with them, and will see as I enter the 11^th year of Main Cam and the 5^th year of Otter Cam.

For more information on the excellent GardePro Cameras visit their website HERE