I always like to tell a story with my pictures. Preferably a bit about the ecology or typical behaviour of the animal. It can be pretty hard to get this into a story, so I’m always pleased if it works.

I came to Spitsbergen for the first time in 1999 to study Barnacle Geese. This I did for the next three summers. Since then the geese have a special place for me and I always like seeing them. During lectures on them I always explain that they breed on small islands or on cliffs to avoid predation by Arctic Foxes, but until now I never managed to capture this properly. Especially the cliff-breeding geese were hard. I had a few pictures of geese breeding high up on a cliff, but that didn’t really tell the story. I think this picture does a better job. You see the geese on one of the lower parts of the cliff with breeding Brunnich’s Guillemots in the background. Also visible is the problem of this family. Even though it’s a little green, there is hardly anything to eat, so they have to go elsewhere to find that…