Flock of geese missing in big freeze

The big freeze has brought an unusually large number of light-bellied brent geese to the Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve in Northumberland.

About 4,000 geese have arrived at the island, which is used by the birds as a winter feeding ground, but the whereabouts of several thousand of them remains a mystery.

The world population of these small geese is estimated at only around 6,000 individuals.

In the summer the birds breed in the Arctic on Svalbard and Franz Josef Islands with a few in north east Greenland, but all the birds leave their breeding grounds after they have nested to avoid the worst of the Arctic winter.

In most years, around half of the birds head to the UK and spend the winter at Lindisfarne, with the rest wintering in Denmark and together the two sites hold over 99 per cent of the world population of the geese.

But during the big freeze the Danish wetlands froze over and the geese which arrived there were forced to abandon Denmark to find new feeding grounds.

The birds were expected to arrive at Lindisfarne but never touched down. Natural England's Lindisfarne reserve manager Andrew Craggs said he hoped that have found a safe haven elsewhere in Europe.