Goose Season In Full Flight

The return of migrating visitors takes Jim back to magical childhood experiences

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A SINGLE pink-footed goose stands alone in an autumn stubble field, which is almost as rare an event as finding an ice cream seller in the Sahara. A pink-footed goose hardly ever stands anywhere alone.

Ten minutes ago, there was a garrulous flock of about 2000 in this field, and given the lateness of the hour and the proximity to sunset, some corporate signal rustled through the flock like a cool breeze. Suddenly every neck was tall, every head was up and swivelling to every compass point, and then every bird was facing in the same direction.

Then they flew, en masse and fortissimo, the air rocked, and the noise of it all was matched only by the spectacle.

They headed out, low and loud, in banks of wide and shallow vees, on a course that offered the shortest route to roosting waters. All of them, that is, except one. Suddenly it looks as if the bird has been pinned to the pale straw of the field by a searing, sharp-edged, fiery blade of sunset light, and suddenly you are staring at something you never thought you would see – a beautiful goose.

The dark brown head and upper neck looks almost crimson in that moment of extraordinary light, the lower neck and breast are pale pink. The white lines that pattern the folded wings – and that flowing white line like the edge of an escarpment that seems to bind folded wings to body – glow a hotter shade of pink, and there is even a faint blush of pink on the white blaze beneath the tail. And the bill, the legs, and of course the feet were pink in the first place, and now they are simply a deeper pink than ever.

This bird is aglow.