Why newborn barnacle geese must plummet hundreds of feet to survive their first day

Nature · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Barnacle geese nest on high Arctic cliffs to escape predators, but this safety comes with a brutal cost. Within 24 hours of hatching, flightless goslings must leap from the precipice, tumbling hundreds of feet to reach food. It is a harrowing, high-speed descent that defies logic but ensures their survival.

To avoid predators like foxes, barnacle geese nest on high, inaccessible ledges. However, because parents cannot bring food to the nest, goslings must descend to the grass and water shortly after hatching. This journey begins with a terrifying, uncontrolled plunge. While the sight of a tiny, fluffy chick hitting rocks is alarming, their low body mass often allows them to bounce rather than sustain fatal injuries. David Cabot, who first filmed this behavior in 1985, notes that most deaths occur only when chicks become trapped in gullies or strike sharp rocks.

The survival rate of the fall itself is remarkably high, estimated at about 90 percent. Yet, the journey is far from over. Once at the cliff base, the goslings face a gauntlet of predators, including glaucous gulls and Arctic foxes, which eagerly hunt the vulnerable young. Consequently, only about half or fewer of the chicks reach young adulthood. This harsh reality is a standard part of the species' life cycle, which includes three main populations breeding in eastern Greenland, Svalbard, and Novaya Zemlya.

The stakes of this early life are immense. If a gosling fails to follow its parents when it is time to fledge, it is typically abandoned and perishes. Researchers have documented various grim outcomes, from accidental falls into waterfalls to predation during the descent. Despite these dangers, the strategy remains effective enough to sustain the population. The survivors eventually migrate to wintering grounds, such as the Scottish island of Islay, where tens of thousands of geese congregate annually to feed on grass.

The population dynamics of these birds are complex. While numbers rose from the 1960s, recent years have seen a decline. The eastern Greenland population, for instance, dropped by over 10 percent between 2013 and 2018. This is partly attributed to human intervention; in Scotland, conflicts with farmers over livestock grazing led to government-sanctioned culling. In 2017 and 2018 alone, more than 3,300 geese were shot, highlighting the ongoing tension between these resilient birds and the human environments they inhabit during their winter migration.

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