The poor old Greenland White-fronted Goose continues to decline in abundance because of poor production of young, but we still don’t know what causes them to find it difficult to breed! There are plenty of theories, but not much hard evidence. Amongst the front runners for an explanation is the arrival of Canada Geese in west Greenland during the summer; they have recently colonized from their previous breeding range in North America. Their highly aggressive behaviour makes them dominant over White-fronted Geese and so we need to know more about their relative abundance. After 2 years of disappointment because of bad weather, Tony finally managed to complete an aerial survey of the important parts of the breeding grounds in late August 2007. The team found almost 6 times as many Canada Geese as Greenland White-fronted Geese (remember there were very few Canada Geese at all in west Greenland back in the mid 1980s). They also found 500 geese from another North American population, the Lesser Snow Goose, so the Yanks are really coming in large numbers to west Greenland, fuelled by large expansions in all goose numbers in that continent. After the flying was finished, he helped colleagues catch small birds (using mist nets) to screen them on behalf of the US authorities for the presence of avian influenza, amidst concerns there that Greenland forms a bridge for the disease to be transmitted via breeding birds up there that migrate either to the New World or the Old. The photo shows the settlement at Uummannaq which he flew over during one of the longer flights to the north of the breeding range.