Lying in the dark at five, I thought of the pink-footed geese newly arrived here from Iceland. No strangers to bad weather, yet they were out there in that squall, whose heavy tattoo hammered on the window by my bed. I could imagine rain running in droplets down the contours of their roosting heads, dark goose eyes opening and closing in the cold.
Around six, before dawn, we were there ourselves, in the rain, to meet them by the loch. Yet there were few geese. Instead we watched hay bales take shape from the dark field, and the black swathe of a wood march slowly out of the night’s wider darkness. Then mute and whooper swans were suddenly white swatches on the grey plate of the loch, and, by seven, night had dissolved and morning came in with mist and rain. Ducks that had been just dark blobs spread in hundreds and even thousands over the water, turned one by one to wigeon, or goldeneye, or mallard and tufted ducks. We could pick out eventually the polished mahogany heads of drake pochards, the emerald wing panels in flying teal.
At ten, rain stopped. By eleven, blue sky domed over this Aberdeenshire landscape and many of Strathbeg’s wintering geese went finally out to feed in the surrounding stubbles. They were predominantly pink-footed geese, of which species there can be 40,000 here by November. Half that number have already arrived, but this season they are joined by 2,000 to 3,000 of a smaller pied relative called barnacle geese, which have probably flown here from Svalbard. One after another, distorted lines of these birds spread across the sky, creating an air of business and commotion.
By noon it was a very different day from the one born at first light. The woods were green again, and the encircling fields of harvested arable were soft gold. It was temperate farming country and a lone swallow flew and dipped overhead. Beyond that were the voices of the geese. It was moving to reflect that just a few days earlier they had been heard over lands where there are polar bears and over seas where there are humpback whales.
