With a white face and black neck, this goose migrates from Arctic breeding areas to UK coasts and estuaries for winter.
Its head, neck, and breast are black, its face is creamy white, and its blue-grey back has pale stripes.
Barnacle geese may find grass themselves or approach grass where a companion is feeding. Among 28 captive-born geese kept in the Netherlands, individuals that were more cautious about approaching unfamiliar objects showed a higher proportion of attempts to join companions at grass. Birds sharing the same food differed in their foraging behaviour.
In February 2009, short grass was placed in 10 randomly selected pots among 99 flowerpots. Groups of four geese entered for ten-minute trials. Seven shy and seven bold focal birds, classified by their responses to unfamiliar objects, were compared. Joining attempts, including unsuccessful attempts to feed at an occupied pot, averaged 47.8% of finding-plus-joining events in shy birds and 22.5% in bold birds. Among joining attempts, birds with higher social dominance had a higher proportion that resulted in actual feeding.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
The Svalbard-breeding population wintering on Britain’s Solway Firth suffered a mass mortality event involving high-pathogenicity avian influenza in winter 2021–2022. Of 41 barnacle geese submitted from the area for testing, 39 tested positive for H5N1. Conservation organizations and diagnostic services collected and tested dead birds; existing records of abundance and distribution helped identify the scale of mortality and direct sampling. The authors proposed continued monitoring of antibodies in returning geese and of virus isolates from this population.