There was a time when there were no geese around here at all – at least, none like these.
Why are they here now?
Like the Canada Goose’s plumage, the answer comes in at least three parts.
Firstly, (let’s call this the grey-brown feathering that covers most of the goose’s body) around three hundred years ago, the first immigrant CGs sprang themselves from the lakes of Victorian collectors, and went feral in Norfolk, Cheshire, the Thames Valley and elsewhere. At some more recent point, their soft upper-body hues began to pattern Cambridgeshire.
A second answer (the black of the neck, head and tail-tip) is that just a few years ago – three? five? – a new reservoir was created in the next village-but-one to fill the void of an exhausted gravel pit. Since then, tiring of the water after long days of jousting with cormorants, or finding the lake too exposed for roosting, the geese have gathered in the sunshine of the gently sloping south-facing flank of Fox Hill.
A third answer (the blazing white chinstrap and rear undercarriage), is that the season is turning. Autumn is underway, and temperatures are dropping faster than well, goose-droppings.
The photo above is weeks old. There were more than a hundred geese on Fox Hill this morning. Soon, perhaps, they will head en masse for the coast, as they seem keen to do. But they also seem undecided– perhaps unsure about tackling the long journey ahead in freshening winds. For several days the birds have been feinting and returning. First, they did this in small groups – a dozen birds forging an arrow and honking across the sky, only to double back a few minutes later. Then the skeins began to multiply, the latter made up of three or four arrows, each containing maybe twenty birds. As before, the geese lifted themselves effortfully into the sky, but then wheeled around, resorting to the earth again. It’s as though they were trying-on the idea of migration, before committing.
When they do disappear altogether – and probably all together – we will realise too late that the last trial-flight we barely paid attention to, was in fact The Big One. We had misunderstood – and underestimated – the determination of the geese to heed the call of their instincts. We had failed to grasp the determinations of the geese’s impressive hive mind: this was the time to leave.
The mind of a goose – or a flock of geese – is not something easily understood.
How much easier it is to comprehend the determination of foreign truck drivers to go – or stay – where life will be best for them.
Driving back from the vets this morning (Stig was due a vaccination), I passed long lines of cars leaking from a nearby service station. Closer to home, empty pumps rendered the forecourt in the village as silent and still as the lake at nightfall. It’s clear that being insensitive to the needs of others, and consequently mis-anticipating what their choices might be – is a national pastime.
Back on the patch of grass, weeds and gravel we call a drive, I paused to take stock. There is just under half a tank of fuel in the car. After that – crisis solutions not withstanding – my journeys will be measured by the distance I can feasibly cycle – wheeling myself, and my burdens, unaided through the cold Autumn air of post Brexit, peri-Covid, pre-enlightenment Britain.
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Till next time.
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