Here’s a story from Monday’s Irish Times. The Times is a subscription service, so I can’t link directly to it.

4,500-mile wild goose chase leads trackers to a chilling end By Paul Kelso

Researchers conducting the most elaborate wild goose chase in history are digesting the news that a bird they have tracked for over 4,500 miles is about to be cooked.

Kerry, an Irish light-bellied Brent goose, was one of six birds tagged in Northern Ireland in May by researchers monitoring the species’ remarkable migration.

Last week, however, he was found dead in an Inuit hunter’s freezer in Canada, still wearing his $4,600 satellite tracking device. Kerry was discovered by researchers on the remote Cornwallis Island. They picked up the signal and tried to find him.

“They looked in all the fjords and lakes where Brent geese go, but had no success at all,” said Mr James Robinson, senior research officer of the Wildlife and Wetland’s Trust, which organised the project.

“Then as they were walking back into town, their receiver started beeping more strongly. They tracked the beeps to a house, knocked on the door, and found that the guy who lived there had shot Kerry on another island, called Bathurst Island.

“Kerry was in the hunter’s freezer. He hadn’t been plucked and the transponder was still on him. The hunter was somewhat surprised – he didn’t know what the device on the goose’s back was.

There’s a moral here somewhere. I just can’t quite see what it is.