Pink-footed Goose Call MP3s
A high-pitched, almost yelping call that carries well over open stubble and estuary mudflats where pink-feet raft up in huge numbers.
Also known as
Recordings (4)
About this species
A large grazing goose of the Anatidae family measuring roughly 68 cm, the Pink-footed Goose (Anser brachyrhynchus) is unmistakable — compact and grey-brown with a small dark bill banded pink and conspicuously pink legs. It packs onto stubble fields and improved pasture, roosting on estuaries and lakes.
It gives a distinctive high, squeaky 'wink-wink' on the wing. It gleans waste grain, potatoes and growing cereals from open fields. It gathers in spectacular flocks, wheeling in tight formation over roost and field. In Greece and the southern Balkans it is chiefly a winter visitor to open fields and coastal wetlands.
Legal use
The Pink-footed Goose breeds almost exclusively in Iceland, Greenland, and Svalbard and winters mainly in the UK, so its real-world hunting range is narrow: it is a popular, actively hunted quarry species in Iceland, where the open season runs from around 20 August into the autumn/winter months, and is one of only a handful of goose species that may legally be shot in Great Britain (1 September–31 January, or 20 February below the high-water mark) under the Wildlife and Countryside Act. It is not a hunted species in mainland Europe generally, since most of the population never travels there, and spring hunting of this species in Iceland is illegal. Confirm exact dates and local rules in our full country-by-country disclaimer before hunting.