Northern Light Book Shop

SEPTEMBER

There have been rumours of geese since we arrived here. Of tens of thousands, that passed through Montrose Basin on their way South.
I did wonder where in the South, and developed an idea that they flew to the Antarctic, where Summer must be coming, at least early Spring.
Pink footed geese they were, are. Of which I know nothing really, except that they must be ‘geese like’. They began turning up in mid September, but I thought nothing of it, they would soon be gone – I must get down to the SWT Visitor’s Centre some time and have a closer look, before they left.
However, turning up the little road to Rossie, off the A92, I was confronted on my right, in a big barley stubble field, with the sight of what seemed to be thousands of geese, these pink footed beasties.
Stopping the car I rolled down the window, to watch from my mobile hide. Bits and pieces of “geese/goose lore” are adrift in my head though, not joined up in any reasonable way.
It slowly dawned, as the noise of rushing rice paper filled the air as one section of the thousands of geese wheeled up and off, circled round, then landed farther away, that the point sentry had seen me, and alerted the flock to head further away to safety.
That they pick these big open areas, like tundra, taiga, open stubbly barley fields deliberately. Making it difficult for predators to get at them, except for high powered rifles. So humans must be whom they are most at risk from.
Still, the next day, as I headed out in the car from home, on the fence post looking directly at the flock wheeking, wheee-weeek, flock, was a male buzzard, who looked at me with no animus, then unfolded his wings, floating off.
He was watching the birds, but broad daylight would not enhance his chances of getting too close. Still, if you think about it, his diving into the flock would surely produce a result for him, he must be faster from a flying start than they.
Maybe a goose is just too big to tackle, when it all mad energy for the escape, from the searching, engaging talon.
I tell it is a male because the bird books tell you of sexual dimorphism, that the female is larger than the male. Taking that information on trust I have seen some large buzzards that I took to be females.
By comparison this guy was smaller, though with no less a fierce wide eyed look that no human could ever produce. Not vicious, not nasty, just adapted for living off meat. Rabbits are a more likely prey.

What happened with the pink foots, over the next few days, became the subject of an email I felt compelled to write to “The Montrose Review”, the local weekly newspaper, mainly written by one Nikki Sherrett, a true titan of journalistic production. It went like this:
“Thursday 9th October 10 am’ish.
I was looking at a post on your website regarding the goose breakfast at the SWT site on Sunday 5th October, which made the whole scene sound very nice. However, living at what was Mountboy Farm on Rossie Braes since the summer only, I was surprised, delighted, and privileged to have the geese fly over my house every morning in search of a roost to hang out with each other when, I presume, the tide is out in Montrose Basin.
Earlier this week the geese were on the field just off the wee road to Rossie, off the Mountboy turn on the A92. As I came past they would rise and turn and head deeper into the field.
However, this Monday, I heard (not saw) at about 6.45 am, shooting in the area of the birds. Some sounded like semi automatic gun fire.
This also happened on Tuesday, and then the geese moved inland, to the big barley field behind my house, off the road that goes to Drumbertnot to Friockheim eventually.
Someone began shooting at them in the early morning as they came in in huge flocks with what I presumed to be some kind of gas gun. On Wednesday the geese won, they are very persistent when they want to get to somewhere, and they left them alone for the day.
However today, the geese were a bit later in coming, and they really want to, and still seem to want to, land in this field (at 10.40)
However, my daughter and I have just witnessed the disturbing sight of these geese actually being shot, and their bodies loaded into big sacks then taken away on tractors.
This field probably WOULD have been ploughed by now, as it seems that it is too wet to plough, and the field being might have changed the geese decision as to where to go. However, this field is right adjacent to the one that the farmers want to build wind turbines on. The public inquiry into this starts in early November.
I understand that the turbine field had been set aside for years before this, until last year it was planted with barley. Two rights of way also run across this field, which have disappeared under the planting, and, as someone new here, I can’t help wondering if these events are interconnected.
I presume that the farmer has a permit to shoot these birds, but I am still disturbed that this should be allowed. It seems that there is to be no space left for the geese, who come here every year; and there will certainly be none if the wind turbines are put up. The whole area will be taken up by them, as well as by the industrial farming that goes on round about it, and it is not that large a space anyway for all that want to use it.
If the geese are valued as a conservation resource, and a tourist draw around here (though I believe that the geese are valuable for all of us in just being themselves) surely it would be more useful to look at the geese habits when they are not on the basin – just where DO they go?
As the SWT is a Government Agency, as far as I can see, surely it would not be beyond them to actively manage these fields for geese, rather than wind turbines, or indeed agrichemical farming; or at least come to some agreement with the local farmer, as they do in Islay. That is not perfect, but at least it works, and may help provide a model for here.
I do not think narrow interests should be allowed to prevail, and in the manner of the shooting this morning, out of sight is definitely out of mind. The tourists need not be concerned as to the deeper reality.”
Nothing happened though, not the following week, nor the one after that. It did not appear on the website. It either got lost in the ether (I used their contact form), or shooting geese is not a story.

Reading it again it is just not very good, and very naive. That is the trouble with firing missives off quickly, you either miss a lot out, or just sound garbled. Time tends to lend a bit of perspective to your efforts, but I think it only goes to show the power that these natural forces can suddenly exert over you – you take a position, for or against, very very quickly, or I do, anyway.

Violet Jacob
On the sea front at Monifeith is a set of standing stones, modern, but carved in the Pictish manner.
On one of them is the last stanza from Violet Jacob’s famous (in Angus) poem, about these “Wild Geese”.
When I mentioned this to the person who had pointed out the poem to me, she took a wry pleasure in the thought. However many wild Geese there are at Monifeith, there are many more here at Montrose.
Violet Jacob was born in the House of Dun, a large country house outside Montrose, on the road to Brechin. You can see across the Basin from up there, and the geese, in even larger numbers, would clearly have made an impression on her.
She lived in India, but returned to Kirriemuir, a daughter of privilege, and of Empire, perhaps, but Angus born and bred.
The poem itself seems to shift viewpoints, from the goose itself, to the wind, the ever present wind, and to the observer, in exile, wondering if they will ever go home. I wonder how many do have such feelings though, many are happy to go, never to return, the Scottish cultural schizophrenia.

Anyway, the poem goes like this:

” The Wild Geese
‘Oh, tell me what was on yer road, ye roarin’ norlan
As ye cam’ blawin’ frae the land that’s niver frae my mind?
My feet they trayvel England, but I’m deein’ for the north—’
‘My man, I heard the siller tides rin up the Firth o’ Forth.’

‘Aye, Wind, I ken them well eneuch, and fine they fa’ and rise,
And fain I’d feel the creepin’ mist on yonder shore that lies,
But tell me, ere ye passed them by, what saw ye on the way ?’
‘My man, I rocked the rovin’ gulls that sail abune the Tay.’

‘But saw ye naethin’, leein’ Wind, afore ye cam’ to Fife?
There’s muckle lyin’ yont the Tay that’s mair to me nor life.’
‘My man, I swept the Angus braes ye haena trod for years—’
‘O Wind, forgie a hameless loon that canna see for tears!—’

‘And far abune the Angus straths I saw the wild geese flee,
A lang, lang skein o’ beatin’ wings wi’ their heids towards the sea,
And aye their cryin’ voices trailed ahint them on the air—’
‘O Wind, hae maircy, haud yer whisht, for I daurna listen mair!”

A helpful glossary is given of the Doric words, as below,from this website, The Scottish Poetry Library, whose web address is thus:
http://www.rampantscotland.com/poetry/blpoems_geese.htm

{Meaning of unusual words:
norlan = someone who lives in the north
fain = fondly
abune = above
muckle = a lot
yont = beyond
hameless loon = homeless lad – though ‘he’ is a ’she’ in this case!}.

It is the last stanza which is on the monument at Monifeith, and the one my neighbour pointed out to me; thus,
“‘And far abune the Angus straths I saw the wild geese flee,
A lang, lang skein o’ beatin’ wings wi’ their heids towards the sea,
And aye their cryin’ voices trailed ahint them on the air—’
‘O Wind, hae maircy, haud yer whisht, for I daurna listen mair!’ ”

This is certainly evocative, and certainly strives to the poetic, and the purple, and has to be the basis of it’s appeal, the Song of the Exile.
You cannot ignore the previous stanza though, which more clearly defines this sense that the place you are in is only a place, and that your heart is elsewhere.
That she did come back is a certain proof of this. Remind yourself of what it says:
“‘But saw ye naethin’, leein’ Wind, afore ye cam’ to Fife?
There’s muckle lyin’ yont the Tay that’s mair to me nor life.’
‘My man, I swept the Angus braes ye haena trod for years—’
‘O Wind, forgie a hameless loon that canna see for tears!—’ ”

I later read an Angus school report compiled in the 1970s, and drawing on the school records kept by previous headmasters. There is a somewhat sanguine note about the number of children off in the 1920s, to attend to the local obsession with hunting and killing. Nothing really changes.
I also learned that you are given a permit to hunt 1 hour from sunrise, and two hours before sunset. Blasting away at midday, as the subject of my agonised letter, is not sporting at all, but different rules must apply there, to hunting across a farmer’s land.
I have been obsessed with conspiracy theories generated by myself since I came here. I just don’t want to change a thing!

Friday
Today is Friday though, and the weather from the West is suddenly easing down. The geese arrived from around 9.30 am today, and by afternoon their numbers are only growing. Another huge flock has turned up, some in what becomes a large cloud as they find the others already down, some in smaller flights of three, four, five.
Now one of the local buzzards floats above the tree, wings planed upwards. I don’t know if he is watching the flocks (because maybe one big flock is actually a series of smaller flocks), or if he is just looking out for the usual stuff.
After all, he lives here all year round. No guns today, what is the difference? I could swear there is a curlew in there somewhere.
Kind of like, too, the wheesper-ing sound a starling makes sitting on a wire. There are these liquid trilling – y kind of sounds, but it must be part of the repertoire of the goose sound, perhaps one of the modulations they use to express “goose” to each other.
They do not atonally honk, not really. The honk is a wee bit more musical and muted. It is there, but these geese are tenors, and their sounds are in that range. No deep bass honkers here.
You have to wander what to do, what they do. How do you study geese?
You COULD read a book, it presents you with information. So, “The Collins Bird Guide” (ISBN 0007113333; 2001 paperback edition), written by Lars Svensson and Peter J Grant (who else is Peter Grant then?), and illustrated by Killian Mullarney and Dan Zetterstrom.
A very respected text when I bought it. Which is why I did, I wanted authenticity, to be a birdwatcher. But you need an eye for all that detail. What fantastic names too! You can’t but be in the presence of authenticity! And illustrating a bird book is just that. “Real” guides don’t use photographs, they use drawings, by accomplished artists. Photographs never give you the scale of the bird, nor accentuate its features. Camera blur, and foreground foreshortening are just some of the problems. You need real fingers on real hands with real paintbrushes to convey the subtleties and nuances of plumage and scale.
After all that is how you identify one bird from another anyway as you watch them. It is very structuralist.
You often tell a bird by what it is not – it is not that size, so it can’t be that. It is not that shade, so it can’t be that. That one doesn’t have that tail so it could be that. And so on. I have to take the local papers word for it that these are Pink Footed Geese. Even with my 20x binoculars I can’t see them clearly enough to make an identification. The joys of birdwatching.
Anyway the Collins Bird Guide version, all very exact information:

“Pink Footed Goose Anser brachyrhyncus (is ‘brach’ something to do with honk, and ‘rhyncus something to do with nose? Anser is to do with geese).
L 64-76 cm, WS137-161 cm. Closely related to Bean Goose. Breeds on arctic tundra and mountainsides in Greenland, Iceland and Svalbard, winters NW Europe. Nests on the ground, at times on rocks”.
Someone has clearly been observing them then, but they don’t excite much more interest than this. But that information does not really capture the goose-ness of it all, their species being, in and of themselves.
Listening to them is more of an experience. You can only soak it up by being there, by ostention; like the Palaeolithic hunter who developed an awareness of potential quarry in retaining information about things they had seen about the species, places they were found, places they were not (structuralist again).
You have to find, try to develop, the parapraxic parameters that let you gain some insight into Being a Goose.
“Words being too slow and cumbrous, the language of signs prevails; and the parties being all eye and ear, the interchange of ideas has an electric rapidity”, wrote a School Inspector in the 19th century, about Friockheim School.
You can turn that to goose-ness, the language of signs is distilled in a whee-week, in a tumbling against the sky, in a sudden panic at the crow, the buzzard, darkening the space above. A human has to insert themselves into that.
But more, much more. Being unable to dominate that landscape technologically and imaginatively that hunter lived among the beasts, could spend hours waiting and watching, the media of the day.
How to think like a moose, like a goose. How to be one. To make objects to capture the spirit of the beast, to paint its likeness on the walls of caves in ochrous shades, to spell out in visuality just what that species means to you, and your people. To use these animals as the badges of your moiety, your clan, your people, your totem – We, The People of the Goose.
Our senses like that are atrophied now, but in watching the flocks, or being behind the bush and just listening to them you have to ask yourself – well, just what can I know about them, what it to be one of them, to be a Goose? I do love this, goose thinking.

The Guide continues:
“Slightly smaller and more compact than taiga Bean Goose (fabalis), about equal in size and proportion to tundra Bean Goose (rossicus). Legs pink (diagnostic), but surprisingly difficult to determine at some distance or in poor light.”
18 lines then pertain to the ways in a birdwatcher determines a species; by what it is, what it is not, what it may be, and by what it might be; i.e by what is, and is not, about a Pink Footed Goose, rather than a Greylag or a Bean Goose, or a young Pinkfoot.
Collins does the voice too. But what to make of,
“Common calls similar in structure to those of Bean Goose but slightly higher pitched than average, often discernibly so with experience. Differ from calls of White Fronted Goose in lower pitch and lack of laughing quality. Softer wink wink is also heard.”
This makes no real sense to the sounds that I tried to hear among the geese. Could I really say they were going “wink wink” as the words on paper say?
A White Fronted Goose now. And I was just thinking that I really needed to see this Bean Goose, if I wanted to strive towards expertness.
I will go there though, I will arise and go now, thought I, to where the wild Bean Goose can be found. Build my hogan with wattle and daub, and bent over sticks. I will go to where Collins tells me; to “…bogs, marshes and pools in remote taiga (ssp fabalis) or on wet tundra (ssp rossicus, both wintering in W and Central Europe.”
Oh no, two sub species to get the hang of. Where does it stop? And still the White Fronted Goose to track down.
Never mind, where do I have to go to see this marvellous Bean Goose, both sub species:
“Migrants passing S Fenno Scandia 2nd half Apr and Sept/Oct. Huge roosting and wintering flocks at favoured places in S Sweden and N Continental Europe; scarce in Britain. Shy and wary.” I must find these favoured places though. Discern fabalis and rossicus, creatures always to be seen in italics, become knowing of such knowledge.

I kind of cheated, as I still think of it, and went to Wikipedia for information. There is an illuminating article, as follows, and who knows, I might add something to it one day.
“Pink-footed Goose
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pink-footed Goose

Conservation status
Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)

Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Anseriformes
Family: Anatidae
Genus: Anser
Species: A. brachyrhynchus
Binomial name:Anser brachyrhynchus
Baillon, 1834

The Pink-footed Goose (Anser brachyrhynchus) is a goose which breeds in eastern Greenland, Iceland and Svalbard. It is migratory, wintering in northwest Europe, especially Great Britain, the Netherlands, and western Denmark. The name is often abbreviated in colloquial usage to Pinkfoot (plural Pinkfeet).
It is a medium-sized goose, 60–75 cm long, the wingspan 135–170 cm, and weighing 1.8–3.3 kg. It has a short bill, bright pink in the middle with a black base and tip, and pink feet. The body is mid grey-brown, the head and neck a richer, darker brown, the rump and vent white, and the tail grey with a broad white tip. The upper wing-coverts are of a somewhat similar pale bluish-grey as in the Greylag Goose, and the flight feathers blackish-grey. The species is most closely related to the Bean Goose Anser fabalis (having even been treated as a subspecies of it at times in the past), sharing a similar black-and-coloured pattern bill, but differing in having pink on the bill and legs where the Bean Goose is orange, and in the paler, greyer plumage tones. It is similar in size to the small rossicus subspecies of Bean Goose, but distinctly smaller than the nominate subspecies fabalis. It produces a medley of high-pitched honking calls, being particularly vocal in flight, with large skeins being almost deafening.[1]
•
Population
There are two largely discrete populations of Pink-footed Goose. The Greenland and Iceland population winter in Great Britain, while the Svalbard population winters in the Netherlands and Denmark, with small numbers also in Norway (where it is common on migration), northern Germany, and Belgium.
Populations have risen spectacularly over the last 50 years, due largely to increased protection from shooting on the wintering grounds. Numbers wintering in Great Britain have risen almost tenfold from 30,000 in 1950 to 292,000 in October 2004. The numbers wintering in Denmark and the Netherlands have also risen, with about 34,000 in 1993. The most important single breeding site, at Þjórsárver in Iceland (holding 10,700 pairs in 1970), was only discovered in 1951, by Sir Peter Scott and his team who made an expedition to seek the breeding grounds. Within Great Britain, the most important wintering areas are in Norfolk (147,000 in 2004), Lancashire (44,000 in 2004), and Aberdeenshire (primarily on autumn and spring passage). Large to huge wintering flocks graze on farmland; individual flocks can be spectacular, such as the 66,000 at Loch of Strathbeg, Aberdeenshire in early September 2003.[1][2][3][4]

Ecology
Nesting is often on cliffs close to glaciers to provide protection from mammalian predators (mainly Arctic Fox), also on islets in lakes. Three to six eggs are laid in early to mid May in Iceland, late May in Svalbard, with incubation lasting 26–27 days. On hatching, the goslings accompany the parents on foot to the learest lake, where they fledge after about 56 days. Southbound migration is from mid September to early October, and northbound from mid April to early May.[1]
The diet is almost entirely vegetarian. In summer, they feed on a wide range of tundra plants, both on land and in water. In winter, they graze primarily on oilseed rape, sugar beet, potato, and various grasses; damage to crops can be extensive, though their grazing can also benefit particularly sugar beet and potato farmers by gleaning leaves and roots left behind after the crop is harvested, reducing the transmission of crop diseases from one year to the next.[1]

Vagrancy
Despite the proximity to the large winter numbers in Great Britain, only very small numbers occur in Ireland and France. It is a rare vagrant to several other European countries and as far south as Morocco and the Canary Islands, and also to eastern Canada and the United States (from Newfoundland south to Pennsylvania).[2][5]
The Pink-footed Goose is one of the species to which the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) applies.
References
1. ^ a b c d Cramp, S. (1977). The Birds of the Western Palearctic. Oxford ISBN 0-19-857358-8.
2. ^ a b Snow, D. W. & Perrins, C. M. (1998). The Birds of the Western Palearctic Concise Edition. OUP ISBN 0-19-854099-X.
3. ^ Collier, M., et al., eds. (2005). Waterbirds in the UK 2003/04. Wetland Bird Survey, BTO/WWT/RSPB/JNCC ISSN 1353-7792 ISBN 1-904870-50-3.
4. ^ Banks, A., et al., eds. (2006). Waterbirds in the UK 2004/05. Wetland Bird Survey, BTO/WWT/RSPB/JNCC ISBN 1-904870-77-5.
5. ^ Dickinson, M. B. et al., eds. (1999). Field Guide to the Birds of North America. National Geographic ISBN 0-7922-7451-2.
• BirdLife International (2004). Anser brachyrhynchus. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 11 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern
External links
• RSPB A to Z of UK Birds
• Pink-footed Goose videos on
the Internet Bird Collection

The following website has a lot of great photographs of Pink Footed Geese. They were all taken in Norfolk, along the East Anglian coast, where most of the ones that don’t stay in Montrose go to winter.
I don’t know if there is any climatic difference, the coldest winter I ever spent was in Cambridge, -16 for weeks upon weeks, in an unheated house. With the Siberian influence there it is often warmer in Montrose!
Still, the pictures are great, and give real insights into the birds. The address is as follows:
http://www.gobirding.eu/Photos/PinkfootedGoose.php.

Is That a Pinkfoot?
At Lunan Bay I did see what I eventually discerned to be, probably, a Greylag Goose, on its own. I saw it on the Saturday, standing on the sand.
My first thought was that it was a Pinkfoot that had lost its way, lost the flock. I tried to imagine what concatenation of circumstances would lead to such a goose being SO lost that it could not find others of its kind. I imagined the horror that must cause to a creature best found with large numbers of its own kind. How could I point it in the right direction?
I changed direction to get a closer look, but wished I hadn’t, as it flew up heavily, unable to gain altitude in to very stiff 5 or 6 westerly (I swear, by lunchtime, it had bursts, not gusts, of Force 7 or 8 contained therein. Buckled the latch on the garden gate, driving it deeply into the wood of the gatepost.
It looked a bit too big to be a Pinkfoot (see, I am birdwatching), and seemed to have a dark eye stripe that I can’t find in Collins.
What really concerned me was that it flew off into the whipped up wind surf thrashing the shallow sand banks and, as I jogged along the ins and outs of the receding tide I could not see it any more.
I visualised it being pounded to pulp in the surf, not a natural habitat for a Greylag, but I also pictured it hiding there, hunkered down as the surf broke around it, hiding, keeping out of the way.
Beautifully though, I saw it on the Sunday. The wind was still blowing stiffly from the west, and it was difficult to make progress as I tracked along the beach, my newest usual route. I want to wear a place down before I stretch into a new one. Like yoga asanas – learn them into a mental comfort zone before looking to incorporate others, create sequences that are supposed to flow.
It is the application of the mental to the physical that effects improvement here. Any fool could twist into the postures, as this fool does, you then have to seek to relax into it, in order to stretch that little bit more, persuade your lymphatic system to release you from the endless inflammation.
The goose though, it was on the other side of the river, with the gulls. Today it is bright and the surf rolls over the suddenly shallowing sand, furthur out; the tide seemed to be right down, and I could pick a way through the pockmarked surf holes in the sand abune the river course. Thank goodness.
That goose does have very pale upper wings, and Collins saying,
“Large, equalled in size only by the largest taiga Bean Goose (which see), but bulkier, with thicker neck, larger head and heavier bill, latter being all pinkish orange or pink. Legs dull pinkish. Wings broad, flight heavy.”
Must be a Greylag, but is that an eye stripe I see. You see greylags all the time, on farms, and on rivers, often with white geese that are derived from the greylag.
But this one seemed wilder, migratory. Just not tame.
On Monday, a similarly stiff winded sun day the goose had transmogrified, seemed to have thinned right down, become more white, light greyish. It was further up the river, just before it turns sharply back towards the settlement at the foot of the rising braes. It seemed to squeak rather, and I told the dog to “Leeeaave”.
You have to say it like that to him, be the topp-er dog.
It had turned into a swan overnight, a young one, this year’s cygnet, but it too was on its own. I don’t know if that is unusual.

It did seem unusual though, not the more common Mute Swan and, referring to Collins again, the bill, as I thought then, looks like a Whooper Swan. It says,
“Icelandic 1st winter birds acquire a whiter look, more rapidly than birds from Fenno-Scandinavia or Russia”.
It then says that they migrate to open waters in North West Europe, but follow the retreating ice back to their home of the hardy in the tundra pools.
The bird was, as it says, highly vocal. Whether they were louder and lower pitched, on average, to a Bewick’s Swan I don’t know.
Difficult too to know if the ,
”notes more straight, not with such a marked dipthong”. I did get the idea of a group of notes, and ‘’kloo, kloo, kloo’ could definitely have been diagnostic.
You know, all these birds, geese and swans, they are High Arctic birds, they like it there, and can’t wait to go back. In early spring they set their compass North, they have winter in their blood.

Saturday

Morning
Today is Saturday though. This morning I heard shooting further off at about 8 am so decided not to go on my usual run down the potato field parallel to the Goose Field, just in case those guys turned up.
I wish I had though. Later on I saw them driving up with their Land Rover, four of them. I was up in the house when they appeared. I wasn’t looking out for them, because I really didn’t want to see them. It all seems so sinister, myself the only silent witness.
They were working along the boundary between the two fields, where I might have run down. In the actual barley field they were picking up things again, bundles that I could not clearly see.
They were being put into sacks, and I thought that I had not heard shooting, and it was strange that they were just going to that limited spot in the field.
I started to think of poison, but couldn’t really believe that. What else could it be? Did these guys have carte blanche to do this too? Just what protection did the birds have?
I just started thinking that so much seemingly done with impunity.
My not so residual desire is to keep my head down, and maybe “They” would leave me alone. That’s the way my Dad was wont to put it. I mentioned what I was tormenting myself with, and my older daughter, who had been looking out the window when the shooting started, said that she had seen a van drive onto the field, along with the Land Rover, and it had a hopper on the back, which was dropping pellets.
They could be fertiliser, but I suddenly remembered that I had seen a small van, with what looked like a bag of fertiliser pellets on it yesterday. I thought they must be about to plough it anyway, just to get the geese off. But, maybe they are baiting the field, with their favourite food, to attract them there, make them feel comfortable there.
Laying on the unwitting guests at a party where the real guests, the hunters, are yet to arrive.

The Lunan does a sudden deep bend just before it hits the surf, and I have to imagine stones being worked deep into the sand as the tide covers the beach that has settled all around its river course, rising banks of crushed shell piling on and on, up and up, leaving The Burn to fight its way into the sea. “The river flows, it flows to the sea. Wherever that river flows, that’s where I want to be. Flow river flow.Flow to the sea”
Those are the words that Bob Dylan scrawled on a napkin, and said, “Give that to McGuinn”, and McGuinn wrote the song that I now listen to, echoes of the wind outside, and now it is gone, transitory as the tides.

I want to go and sit among them, the Pink Foots, down in their big field. They are the geese that are here, they may soon be gone. The local paper says they find their way to The Wash where they really overwinter.
I watch them from behind a blue field shelter at the end of the field next to theirs.
I wear my dun brown everyday clothes, and keep the shed between me and them. I tried it another way, to come from out of the shed and look directly into the field, but they were up, off, gone.
When I train my binoculars on them, to see what they are doing, I see them, still in small scale, but I see them.
I see them in their own Palaeolithic selves, sitting down, standing up, walking about, doing nothing much, waiting, listening, being. Not waiting really, what are they waiting for?
For the tide to turn, for the Basin to empty, for the food to be there again.
Perhaps, but it looks more like they are just chilling, just being with their pals, their kind, just hanging out in the barley field. They spend hours doing it. Brilliant!
Occasionally half a dozen get up, and go winging off in tight formation, fly round, dip down, rise up, then settle somewhere else for a while. A lone bird takes off, settles farther away.
I don’t know why, perhaps they sometimes need space too, but the swinging, turning flight turns and swirls and settles near that goose. Lone Goose, maybe like Lone Bull. The Sioux Indians 4th (and last) stage of a man’s life.
Then another flock comes whee-eeking over, as if to find out what is going on elsewhere, what’s happening in the big barley field (maannn).
What might have been a classic geese skein, a V shape with birds flying up the formation, leader moving over, suddenly turns into a cloud.
The birds lose height, dip their wing tips, hover, rise up to lose speed, drop suddenly, up again, circle round — lose, lose, lose speed, to drop, not to plummet, to be controlled, to not crash, into the ground, caught in the gusts of wind.
Just like the clouds of jackdaws that live among these trees. So many of the birds around here become clouds, the gulls, the jackdaws, the starlings and sparrows.
Suddenly something happens, on the other side of the bush that I am behind. A loud more mewling sound, like gulls, is set up, the rushing rice paper sound of many wings flapping together in the need to get off the ground, now. Like a mighty wind that falls among the oak trees, as Sappho once put it (Love shook my heart).
But what moved them? It all settles down. I look, and see nothing. Perhaps one of the local deer wandered through the field, perhaps a sudden gust panicked one, and set off the rest. Perhaps a low flying hawk (though I can’t see one). The anxiety of the whole flock drains away, and their trilling tenor honks mix in with the wind that rustles among the trees and bushes in the garden.
Three or four crows, they might be jackdaws, or maybe carrion crows, seem to have set them up this time. The crows could be appearing to be doing it for devilment, dropping down among the geese as they struggle to get up. A form of a predator, black winged shape against the sky, above their line of sight, unknowable. Quick, quick, get up. Go, go now!
Then the flying around, and the what is all the fuss about, and the settling back down, the sounds muting, wings folding, calls still a wee bit anxious, but like after a good fright. A kind of “Ahem!”

All at once, as the dusk begins to come in (though not quite yet), they rise up to go. Let us go then, you and I, while the evening becomes upon the sky. The mighty wind shakes among them and with them.
They turn into the wind to lift themselves up, a long thin cloud it becomes, the leaders swing back round to go the other way, and the whole skein looks like a giant Moebius strip stretched half across the sky. They head back in the direction of the Basin, the skein becoming that dense cloud again, before breaking up into smaller flocks, smaller V’s, smaller clouds, for the short hop back.
The Collins volume entry doesn’t really talk about the nature of these smaller flocks. Are the birds just opportunistically joining up together, or are their interconnected relationships among them too, that makes them choose other birds they know, that might be related to them, be their friend?
Humans are only part of a Great Scheme of Being, less far removed from the world of other species than we like to think, just because we have stopped imagining them.
Thinking about friends strays outside the parapraxic parameters though. I am not trying to anthropomorphise them.

Later that day
The lifestyle doesn’t seem to revolve much around food. Of course it is important, but I took the kids down to the Bay, to give them a run about, and the tide was right out, still receding. We saw bits of the bay, among the rock formations, that I have not seen before.
When we came back the flock was still there, and did not fly off until much later, in that great inter-twisted ball of wool formation, heading up fast and low, into the wind to gain height, then when speed is there, turning and twisting to get the extra push from the wind behind.
Not all went though, some stayed on a while longer. Food cannot be the only motivator.
They roost in The Basin overnight. It was a “duuuhhh” moment when I realised that they didn’t need the tide to be out to be there. Of course they would swim.
I saw a map in a book about managing The Basin, and it was quite clear that they had their own area, towards the railway line. The diagram looked like a cloud, a round grey cloud.
More prosaically, standing in the Tesco car park in the dark I clearly heard the whole flock week weeking away in a noisy, irrepressible fashion. Yup, there they were. Wild nature in full flow, right by Tesco.

Late Afternoon
Now it is Saturday afternoon. There are geese in the field in much reduced numbers. The field seems too big for the small coterie that are there, which would seem large, had I not seen the much bigger flocks.
I got down to the bottom of the field, to the field shelter, and suddenly got a good view of them. I wished that I had brought my binoculars, but it was clear that they are spread out in different groups.
Further into the field are a tight knot of birds, the largest part of the group that are there. But, ranged off from that tight core were groups of different sizes, spread out in differing concentration intensities.
It was also clear that they were not really feeding either. My best parapraxic description would be that they were “resting”.
Mostly still, lying down, or walking around a bit. I suppose they could be eating, but I can’t see what. The stubble? There seems to be nothing else in the field worth eating. I suppose their might be sub terrestrial organisms they might fancy, but I see no sign of them shovelling, with their beaks, into and beneath the soil.
Just observing I would have to surmise that their twice daily feed at the Basin gives them more than enough to sustain them, for long periods, such that they can spend time just gorking out here in a convenient empty space, until it is time to go back, to go in, for dinner.
The Collins Guide gives no indication of what they eat though the “Mitchell Beazley Pocket Guide” (ISBN 08553314880, by Peter Hayman) says that they,
“feed largely on stubble, but cereals, potatoes and grass may be included in diet”.
A flight of birds to the west distracted me. They seemed to other geese coming in, but they suddenly wheeled off into potato field. I saw them wheel about, in a tight flock, then their white underparts flashed in, flashed out, they landed in the field, and I excitedly headed back up to see if I could get a better view. Flushed with the beauty of the geese, I wanted to be the same for the peewits.
But I scanned and scanned with my binoculars. I suddenly got better views of lapwings, saw the big old gnarly Scots Pines on the near horizon in sharp relief.
But, a raised line in the field must have kept the peewits hidden from me. They seem very silent too, at this time of year.

At Dusk
Later, again,I got into that field, over the boundary fence. I was watching, just about 6.30’ish. Just watching them.
I was still surprised by how close I seemed, and things hadn’t really changed since this afternoon, in terms of the way different groups were using the field.
More birds were in there, they had come in during the afternoon, ere we all went en famille to the beach, to see what the kids now call “Rocky Waters”. You can only get to Rocky Waters when the tide is out, a section of the coast, at the far end of the beach that comes out, rocky outcrops, small sea stacks, sandy interludes between the rocks, to Rocky Waters itself, which is about as far as you can go before you have to start clambering.
One day we will push on, see if there is any secret havens where small people like us can lose ourselves, and live in peace, forever.
The largest group had disappeared a bit, I didn’t see them at all, while the closest group were still straggled out in a long line along the field. They weren’t doing anything much different, sitting down, walking about, the occasional one getting up and flying around. You could begin to detect a rising tide of excitement though, just a gradual rise, an increase in the tempo.
It didn’t seem like anything, but it seemed like everything. Suddenly, a snapping sound, the giant rice paper fluttering sound, shaken hard by the shaker, a little thunderclap, and up they rose, whee-eeking. All those mid tempo sounds (I try to imagine them as alto and contralto too, there are sounds in that range), uttered by the whole flock form a deeper note, still not bass, but all the birds sounding out at the same time, with the same goose-y thought, to follow on to where they are going.
The skein first headed into the wind, then turned, folded in on itself, ululated up and down in a wash of wings. I photographed as best I could. My camera did not like the extreme aperture setting in this low light, and took ages for the shutter to fire, if indeed it did sometimes. I finally caught the tail end of the flock, above the tree, above the field shelter.
“Whew”, thought I, “this is great”. A sudden raising of whee-eeks, all as one voice, and the larger flock, that I had failed to see suddenly rose all as one, and they streamed out across the field too, celebrating what I might take, parapraxically, to be their gooseness, their common purpose in life, travelling, being, being geese.

When they went I got over the fence, into the scrub between the field I had been in and the barley field. I trod warily, aware for holes, bits of rubble, fence posts, ditches. The moon had risen, nine tenths full at dusk. I felt like a spy in “Blakes Seven”. Oric had said that, despite all the advances in detection technology, dawn and dusk were still the best times to check things out.
I was looking for dead geese, for signs of poisoning. When I thought about it any geese that had been poisoned had to be there now, because how would they come back tomorrow, conveniently; and conveniently drop dead along the field boundary?
I walked down that field boundary, in the fading light, and I found what I thought must be where the Land Rover had stopped. There were some indentations in the bank. If I was one of those men I would have lain back against that bank, awaiting the birds, flattening the grass. I could not see any dead birds along this boundary, so if they were crawling there to die, they hadn’t crawled there yet.
No birds left in the field though, it couldn’t be true the poison was so cunningly calculated that they would fall across the field boundary to die, and be picked up by the brown men.
There were other parapraxic practices at work here that I barely understood, human ones this time. My best guess was coming down to this as a kind of harvest, of a very limited time to shoot, of a limited number of volleys, then time to pick up a small number of birds.
The afternoon numbers made them seem like they had been sorely harvested, but maybe not. I have to keep looking.
I went looking for signs of geese. If you go where Canada Geese have been there is a huge amount of poo, and wear on the grass. I was looking for this. Signs of moulted feathers too, a souvenir of the geese.
It might have been the low light levels, but no matter how I traversed that field I could see very little sign. And “words being too slow and cumbrous”, I was looking for that place where, “the language of signs prevails”. For the geese, in setting off for the Basin, they were all “eye and ear”, and “the interchange of ideas had an electric rapidity”.
For myself I was looking for something less rapid, just material proof that they HAD been there, in this place, communicating with me after the event. I saw no poo though, could not find where they had lain, walked, flown, pooed, honked, moulted. Nothing. I need to look again, in daylight.
And no sign they had been eating stubble. I could see they weren’t but I would have expected to see vast bare patches, but unless they nibble with very small sharp teeth, very small pieces of the stalk then there is no sign of their having eaten at all. Peter Hayman, I can find no proof.
I need to look again, read again, read more into the ways of geese, other observations, people who had sat with them and studied them.
Thinking back too, there was no sign of bait, no potatoes, no grain. They could have eaten it up though, or maybe it never existed at all. Observing from first principles leaves one with the want of large doses of information, spread all around, but which only others have.
Time now to find the field shelter, my landmark, and turn up the field, into the house. Time to mash the kids potatoes, for their mince and tatties, put on their popcorn, get them to bed earlier tonight, ere they rampage about way past my bedtime.

Later Days
The hunting began to continue now. It was all the time, every day. The men seemed to not really bother to take cover.
That large industrio-field is owned by a local farming family called The Stirlings (always thus), and you have to feel that, from first principles, they really don’t want the geese there. They seem to be bussing these yahoos in, and encouraging them to be mean and kill as many birds as they want.
On the final Thursday I hear those men laugh and whoop, but there are no great flocks of geese to shoot at any more, only individual birds. They have succeeded in their purpose, they have driven the birds away.
From first principles too, the inquiry into the building of the wind turbines on their land, in an adjacent big field, is set to start.
If I was a conspiracy theorist I would think that they don’t want talk of geese roosting there, gathering there, to prejudice their desire to carry on making money, taking more from the land than they put in (apart from great washes of chemical fertiliser, insecticide, herbicide, Gro-More-Stuff).And that is what we get to eat.
I re-read a copy of the Licence that the SWT give out. You can get a seasonal licence, or just one for the day. 30 are reserved for the local Gun Club. You can only shoot one hour before sunrise, which would explain the early mornings, and two hours after sunset, in the twilight gloaming both. I can’t explain therefore why the shooting goes on all day. It can’t apply beyond The Basin reserve. Something else to find out.
In some ways I have to think that the soil is actually dead, birds are in great clouds, but they don’t seem to be actually feeding on anything as the tractors turn over the soil. There is nothing there, sub-surface, to turn over and through the soil, aerate and feed it naturally. So, now, wind turbines will provide such a return for men and money.
But there seems no logic to how wind turbines are put up, or where. No hint of a National Strategy as to where they are needed. Just large subsidies given to foreign engineering companies who want to put them up because the Government is paying out huge sums for them to do so. They find a friendly farmer and hey presto. They are not particularly efficient, and do not produce base load electricity. The Government has failed to plan for beyond the life of the current base load power stations and is in a panic to fill the whole with anything. Wind turbines do have a certain beauty though, and who is not in favour of renewable power, energy for free, clean, green energy? You just seem to need an awful lot of them to generate a meaningful amount of electricity.
The “Scottish Farmer” paper showed an Aberdeenshire farmer who thought that it was time that the farmers got involved in the siting of turbines on farmers land. He was standing proudly in front of three that he thought were clearly the bees knees, the last word in renewably powering his farm operations. And, as and when they appear (I am not hopeful) I will just have to get over it, get on with life.
You often need something to rhetorically rub up against though, in order to form an opinion, another side of the dialectic to argue with, initially, before you begin to find yourself (damn it, no) not entirely disagreeing with your chosen opponent.
That struggle for the higher synthesis. Hegel, get yer Geist over here ya ghostly marksman, night time owl flying.

The Killing Field
Before that last Thursday though, the hunting was a bit more formalised. It had been good for them, up to then. The flocks come over in different waves, sometimes larger, sometimes smaller, sometimes two or three at a time. Observing them they seem to have an idea that their favourite field is not quite right. Maybe bait or poison was not what the hunters and the money men wanted, but to see which field the geese picked to land in regularly. Then you could hunt.
But they sit along the field bank with a lure, they blow, a long hoooonk from it, and you can see the birds hesitate. They keep on blowing, but a lot of them pass over, very wary. They were hunted to very small numbers once before, perhaps an extra wary gene has been slotted into their sequencing now.
But, of a sudden, a group break off, wing down, rising and falling, feathering wings, turning, drifting down. Some can’t help it, they land, they stand. Others suddenly take fright, twist upwards, flap with ever decreasing returns, to twist, up, create a smaller silhouette. They know, that these shapes mean them harm.
A shotgun blast, then another, and another, and another. The downed birds are peppered with pellets, perhaps warped into the crossfire. The birds don’t seem to be killed outright, the hunters leap from their spots, peel off from the ditch their camouflage melds them into (even if the geese discerned the difference on the way down, but too late).
They have to hurry, so that the flocks passing overhead will still want to come down here, to this spot tarnished for them forever.
They blast the twisting birds again, no elegant coup de grace slitting their throats, just more buckshot. Who could eat such a bird, what restaurant buy, with buckshot stuffing? They probably just put them in the bin.
Then back to their spot, the hooonnnkkkk starts up again, and it goes on like this until the tractor comes out to collect them. They may even be paying good money for this.
You could see this as suburban squeamishness, but it is not really that. I just feel that you have to love these creatures. These hunters are not hungry, they are not killing for their pot, but for the love of killing.
They are not stalking a wild bird, to get into spot for a shot that might or might not work, the bird having its own chance.
I could see that, just not this luring, baiting, blasting. Killing like this is not innocent, not innocent fun.
If you could kill a wild animal like this what else could such a mentality be capable of?
The bird numbers have been decimated once, and indiscriminate hunting was a part of it. The moment they have the biological nous to come back the whole process starts over again.
But, there are thousands of birds. People thus feel that they have a right to take it, the essence of what they have, which is what they are doing.
We won’t kill them all, they’ll be gone, until next year. Until they are all gone again. Och, stop being so melodramatic Neil. Get a grip.

Finally
At the end of October there are still some geese about. Perhaps they will overwinter here. Why not? They fly away from the house now, seem to feed further away, then come back to The Basin at night. Less of them makes the potential winter feed go further.
I have seen them in the mornings this last week of October, as the gales let up a bit, flying over Lunan Bay to wherever they are going to. Still in decent numbers, but the bulk have moved on.

Afterthought
I heard the sound of the honker lure in the Goose Field again, tonight, the 31st October. Saw the flash of a torch, after the banging, blasting, bamming of the gun.
They need to fire an awful lot of pellets to kill one goose. There is a strange comfort in it though.
The hunting occurs in the twilight, the two hours after sunset; and there are no great flocks to shoot. There may only be one person too, looking to pick off isolated birds, more of a chance for them to evade the hunter.
The way of hunting that allows for a large bag just doesn’t seem right, to me.

Of course, over the winter, the geese didn’t really disappear. They roamed further afield in search of food, and would find other places to stay a while.
But small flocks would suddenly surprise me, in a field near Ferryden, or in the Turbine Field when all the snow fell in February.
That was a cherishable couple of days, but seemed so for the whole country too. Our road was cut off, not cleared of snow, until it just wore down.
A time of silences, and pink sunset skys, the fields a rosy glow in the winter twilight.

September again

September 30th, it must be the start of the hunting season. I went along the top track about 6.40 am and I saw a light on the other side of the big field, wink on and off, behind the trees. I thought it might be a torch.
Aha, I thought, there they are again.
The big 100 acre field below the house is a real favourite spot for the geese, they have been there all week otherwise, and a giant flock headed out in this direction this morning. The noises were immense, intense.
As I circled round behind the woods I heard the guns go off, in rapid fire.
I have to be more sanguine this year, but it is no accident that the root word of that word is to do with blood. It is something they do around here. I will just have to see how this progresses, and this will the subject of my progress on these pages.
It is 12.10 now, and a large flock is still flying around, has been all morning, they don’t seem to want to settle. They are in the field further down from the 100 acre field, but sometimes they sound like they are really close to the house.
I wonder if the noise of the guns has suddenly made them much more wary. I wonder too if they get hunted in their summer pastures. Something to find out.
What is certain is that the geese came this way in very large numbers today. Large straggly flocks, suddenly turning into a cloud, as they hover above their chosen landing spot.
The V’s dissolve anarchically sometimes, small groups of birds suddenly pushing ahead, and others straggling along at the end of what become very long lines of birds, an elongated tick shape.
The weather is turning. Today the gras was wet with that autumnal dew, wet now ’til spring. Dry Arctic air seems to be coming down. I don’t mind at all, I like the sunshine, it is worth a lot now, as the days shorten.
The long long days of Spring are long gone. It was really hard to slep then, it seemed light all the time. You pay for it now though. It is dark at 6.30 nearly, I will soon be going out in the complete dark.
Still, the pull of watching the geese, and the jackdaws, and the rooks, getting ready for the new day, flying out of their roosts is worth the admission.
The colder air produced a dark fog this morning, then sudden inversions, not reaching all the way up into the sky.
The jackdaws tweeked and tweeked out of their big tree, where they spend the night, that veritable cloud emerged.
As a skein of geese flew over they appeared to intermix for a moment, their sounds melding into a shared range of sounds, higher to lower. and then the guns started blamming. It hasn’t really started yet though, full swing is yet to be.

Thursday am, in the half light. As I reach the top of our lane and look left I see two large, bright, yellow, sodium lamps suddenly switch on. I guess I know who they are, as they move slowly along the road in my direction, and I slip into the woods.
As they have been working in the cavbbage field, they start early hereabouts, I have been in the habit of going round there first, rather than last as the old habit.
The idea is to keep the dog off the road as much as possible, as the people who work at the School drive awful fast, and carelessly. Not that I am a great dog lover – I put up with him, and as nobody else walks him I take him with me. I would rather go myself though, it is my walking meditation, my early effort.
As I run down the dogleg in the cabbage field down to the main track ANOTHER landrover is sitting there, its lights blacked out. They start a bit, and I realise they are shooting from this direction. If you look at it from this angle you can see that the birds are having to rise up, over the low Kinaldie Hill, and so are a better target.
I feel pretty miffed, because I do this every day, and they are closing down my circuit. They are so close to so many residential properties, you hear the bullets pop about, and they have no courtesy to tell people that they are going to do this, even drop a leaflet.
Stalking estates in The Highlands post notices about their activities, and suggest alternative routes. Here they just blast away, at 7 in the morning.
Nothing further happens until I get home, and it is lighter. I look across to the bottom of the 100 acre field as the guns start up.
They are in the line of trees at the botom of the field. The geese are flying around in large numbers, in different flocks. They seem to want to come down, but they are wary, and too high for the casual shot.
This circling goes on for what seems like a long time, and a group must have dropped low enough for suddenly a desperate volleying goes up – blam, blam, blam, from different shooters, volleys of shot peppering the air.
I don’t notice what happens really, to the birds, but I continue to watch, as they continue to circle.
Another group must have come down low enough, as the shooting starts up again. I watch the birds more closely now, and out of this fusillade ONE bird drops out of the sky, earthwards. The rest rise up, and manage to fly off, back in the direction of the Basin.
That seems to be it. The birds seem well and truly spooked, and are not coming back here today.
They fly off, in their smaller, their larger, groups, away from those trees.
It does seem an awful lot of shot for one bird, but I can’t help but think of all the other shot that must be impregnated in other birds, too take away, to live with through the day, and night, and other days to come. I don’t know what happens to birds like that.