Special observations by people interested in brant are shared on this page If you have something to add, please let us know!
Foreman the Performin' Brant visits the classroom
Maynard Axelson raises brant on his farm on Fir Island in Skagit County, Washington. Every year he brings one of his brant to school to talk about brant geese with students participating in the Brant Monitoring Program.
Click here to download the movie (3.1 MB)
A Brant spent the summer in Mexico!
Photo by Magda Loyon Meling from Cloegio Ensenada School
It was a sunny day in Punta Banda Estuary (Ensenada, Baja California, México). The tide was high.
I was with a group of students (between 16 and 17 years old). We were on a field trip studying the salt marsh and its
inhabitants. There’s a trail which the visitor can walk down and learn about the local flora and fauna. We saw the
Brant at the starting point of the trail. I asked the students to be very quiet and asked my friend Enrique Zamora (he has
good bird identification skills) to confirm my identification. We agreed it was a Brant, even though it didn’t looked
very good. We thought it could be sick, because it didn’t fly. As we got closer, it just walked away a few steps, and
then stopped and started to feed on Pickleweed (Salicornia bigelovii). We were very close to it, but it didn’t move.
Maybe it was not afraid or maybe it couldn’t fly or swim.
Story by César Iván Manríquez Castro
Brant Art by Edith and Rose Tate
Inspired by their experience of counting Brant in Padilla Bay, Edith, age 11, and Rose, age 8, created this art. Edith and Rose are homeschool students from Mt Vernon who participated in the International Brant Monitoring project in February 2006.
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These brant geese were photographed on a farm in Washington State on Fir Island in the Skagit River Delta. Maynard Axelson raises them as pets and is an ardent supporter of wild brant geese. In the wild, brant geese lay their eggs in the tundra in Alaska, Canada and Russia. The newborn brant are able to walk and swim within a day after being born and are able to fly just seven weeks later. |
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Brant dig or find a small depression in which to build their nests. Since the weather can be extremely cold, even in summer, they protect the eggs with thick layers of down in the nest. The average brant pair lays about 4 eggs, however, not all of these will survive to birth. Weasels, foxes and some native people eat the eggs. Cold weather and floods can also destroy eggs. Both parents continue to protect their young for some time. It will be another three years before these chicks can have young of their own.
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Guy L. Monty of Parksville BC, Canada took this picture of a black brant March 1, 2005. Parksville is on the east side of Vancouver Island just up the coast from Nanaimo. This is the same individual seen at Parksville Bay in March 2004. The Russian banding office confirmed it was banded as an adult on July 11, 2003 on the Lena River estuary, Yakutia, Russia. It is currently paired with an un-banded black Brant. It sure would be interesting to know where it's going to nest this year! |
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John Roser of Morro Bay, California noticed that as the numbers of brant increased, the percent of juveniles decreased from November to December. He documented this trend two years in a row. What does that suggest about a difference in the timing of migration of juveniles and adults? John also observed that the total number of brant and the proportion of juveniles in Morro Bay stayed relatively constant from early December until mid January. |
Brant Song by the Club de Investigacion de AvesLA
CANCION DE LA BRANTA
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| ¿Quien sera la gente
que cuidara de la branta? que no se extinga como muchas otras aves ¿Quien cuide de ti
Quisiera ser yo
¡Te podemos salvar! |
Who would be the people
who would take care of the brant? so it won’t become extinct as many other birds Who could take care of you
I wish it could be me
We can save you! |