Wild Goose Dacha

No human dreams of relaxing on the shores of Novaya Zemlya, an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean that’s best known as a Soviet testing site for nuclear weapons. Yet a growing flock of Pink-footed Geese have begun to make this militarized zone their summer home. Though this region was once too cold for the geese to raise young, climate change — and increased competition for food — may have made Novaya Zemlya a compelling alternative to their traditional territory in Svalbard. It’s also possible that the Pink-footed Geese found the archipelago by following other migratory waterfowl, which could prove to be a rare example of cultural knowledge being transmitted between species.

BirdNote^®
Wild Goose Dacha
Written by Jonathan Feakins

This is BirdNote.

No human dreams of relaxing on the shores of Novaya Zemlya. It’s an isolated group of islands in the Arctic Ocean north of Russia that’s best known as a Soviet testing site for nuclear weapons. Yet a growing flock of Pink-footed Geese have begun to make this militarized zone their summer home.

[Pink-footed Goose]

Pink-footed Geese spend the winter in the British Isles and western Europe. The UK population migrates to Iceland and Greenland, but the rest breed exclusively on the Norwegian island of Svalbard — or at least they used to.

In 2018 and 19, researchers attached GPS trackers to 21 Pink-footed Geese in Finland. To their surprise, half of them turned up on the Russian islands, roughly 600 miles east of Svalbard.

This region was once too cold for the geese to raise young. But climate change and increased competition for food may have made Novaya Zemlya a compelling alternative. Researchers suspect, though, that these geese didn’t stumble upon this new migration route on their own.

[Taiga Bean-Goose]

Pink-footed Geese sometimes mingle with Taiga Bean-Geese, a species that visits Novaya Zemlya when it’s time to molt each spring. It’s possible that the Pink-footed Geese followed their lead, which could prove to be a rare example of cultural knowledge being transmitted between species. “Birds of a feather,” indeed.

[Pink-footed Goose]

For BirdNote, I’m Michael Stein.

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Senior Producer: Mark Bramhill
Producer: Sam Johnson
Managing Producer: Jazzi Johnson
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Content Director: Jonese Franklin

Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Pink-footed Goose ML57969501 recorded by Lynden Schofield and ML304616 recorded by Peter Boesman. Taiga Bean-Goose ML65388401 recorded by Jelmer Poelstra.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2025 BirdNote January 2026
Narrator: Michael Stein

ID# PFGO-01-2026-01-29 PFGO-01

Reference:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2362124-geese-are-breeding-at-a-former-nuclear-weapons-test-site-in-the-arctic/
https://www.birdguides.com/articles/ornithology/pink-footed-goose-rapidly-colonises-arctic-russia
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)00134-3