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During a time when many of us faced the prospect of trivial work or human contact , famed naturalist Nick Acheson found a sense of peace and function in his pursuit of the wild geese that filled the Norfolk skies on their seasonal visits from Iceland and Siberia . With an interest in protecting the future of geese , Nick kept a journal of his sightings and the stories he come upon along the way . In the passage below , he recounts his experience while pass off a cycling milepost in the beginning of February – about midway through his journey .
The followers is an excerpt from theThe Meaning of Geeseby Nick Acheson . It has been adapted for the WWW .
Greylag jackass spread out to their fostering web site across North Norfolk , while stay pinkfeet hideaway to coastal skimming marshes . I pass a cycling milestone : a thousand miles bicycle after geese , the distance fly by a pinkfoot from the highlands of Iceland to Norfolk . Barnacle geese gathering at Holkham Lake prior to breeding .
Monday, February 1st: An Unexpected Companion
I saw not geese today , but a rabbit . It was crouched at the boundary of a field of force , at the seam where a wildlife headland met a craw of oil-rich seed rape . I had inched my bike along almost two Admiralty mile of a nowhere lane – thick with mud from harvested sugar common beet – until I found the same beat of hedgerow in a photo that a acquaintance had send .
Further back along the lane I ’d seen two shelduck at a flooded hollow in a field . At the early hint of spring they spread out in pair across the res publica , these raffish , chestnut- chested duck , eschewing their coastal wintertime flocks . They flew along the lane , above me , bills wax - red in the lunchtime Lord’s Day , dropping maunder whistles as they went .
I stopped at an ugly right - angled outgrowth , hacked by a clumsy flail . put my hand in my pocket to watch it against the mealy pic on my phone , I saw the hare . A negligible fraction of our Norfolk hares lack all tawny paint in their fur . Where a typical hare is tan , these precious animals are white ; though yawp chip still score their coats , rendering them silver . Beside me , eleven class since I saw one last , was a facile hare .
I had heard about this recherche animal by probability . My friend knew nothing of our silver hare and sent his photo asking what it was . It had made his day , he allege . Among North Norfolk game warden and farmers , silver rabbit must always have been make out ; but these lovely thing are almost mythically rare . Few photographs exist ; few naturalists can claim to have seen one .
The silver rabbit lay folded in its form , lunar month - beautiful , its farsighted ears flat along its back . Checking branch by offset and ambo by dais for the hare ’s distinctive topographic point , my blood-red bike and I had trespassed close , with just the winter - naked hedge between us . The rabbit was still for long enough for me to crouch and lift binoculars and wish , for once , I owned a camera ; but then it sedately loped along the foreland and turned onto a tyre path across the field . Here it posture , stretch up , and get me watch . No other , lesser , hare was near .
Once it had gone , into the mazed primer beyond the forehead , I started home , a great grin across my face . Nature , I know , is heartless , repel only by the sibling penury to prosper and to reproduce . This rabbit , though – this silver hare , which let me see it – was nothing less than blessing .
Thursday, February 4th: Spring Has Spoken
As days grow longer , use of the landscape painting by our two most numerous grey geese is changing fast . Almost the first birds I watch at home this sunup were four greylags , wing upstream . Throughout the solar day I chance Anser anser everywhere I go . They may be workweek from laying eggs , but they are leaving winter heap and spread out across North Norfolk now , reclaim website in which they intend to breed .
Pinkfeet , by contrast , have shorten to the coast . In James McCallum ’s first book , Wild Goose Winter , he graph three phases of their Norfolk visit . In the first they feed in coastal grazing marshes and nearby summertime chaff . As soon as carbohydrate beetroot is raise , they start to fee in harvested airfield . More of late , this has included Zea mays fields too . Towards winter ’s end , as thousands of pinkfeet leave us , to present in Lancashire , prior to fly on to Iceland , those which stay withdraw to coastal marshland and provender on grass again . The pinks have for the most part entered this last stage now .
Skylarks babble along the Dry Road as I pedalled to the coast this morning . I get a line a singing yellowhammer too – under his breath , as though diffident he have a go at it quite how – and the day was full of mistle thrushes ’ half - woolgather , Wagnerian voice . A pheasant gave ballistic bivalent - cough , a song thrush shrilled , and it was mild .
The novel flood lamp between Wells and Holkham was busy with waterfowl : wigeon drakes , head molten in unwonted Sunday , and graphite gadwall crowding orotund dispassionate duck . Above them marsh harriers displayed , buoyant on the fledgling thermals of the year ; beyond , on Quarles Marsh , thousands of pinkfeet pasture .
A solemn panel of herons had assemble around the Iceni fort , a lone great egret with them , each hold off to dagger a careless field field mouse in the wintertime - yellowed green goddess . In front of them Holkham ’s flock of Russian whitefronts grazed , their orange legs and frosted foreheads visible at great aloofness in the tolerant spring light . Last hebdomad Andy counted 300 of them on the marsh .
The usual circle of Egyptian geese was by the Marsh Farm track , halfway to Whincover and Burnham Overy , and with them was a single pinkfoot . I was frame this goose ’s write up in my head – how it amount to be alone while 1000 of pink were in the marsh beyond – when two cattle egrets strutted past the horses at the farm , in their ungainly way . I ’m still shock whenever I see cattle egrets in Norfolk – so recently have they settle here – ball over and fright too by what it signify for our warming climate , and all our other wildlife .
I had more prompt concern , though . lour my field glasses from the egret I cycle on , feeling at once that my back wheel need atmosphere . I laid my wheel down in the verge to pump the tyre but – air hissing from its somehow - ruined valve – in seconds it was perfectly flat .
By the shortest route , in the south along the adorable valley of the Burn , I was thirteen mile from home . I lead off to walk , cycle my wounded bike beside me , its musical rhythm sounding on the macadam as we operate : two screaky quavers and a buzzing quirk . Larks lit our way . A collared peacenik sang . Two purr rook launched into gaga helter - skelters above my brain . A coarse gull – weeks yet from its highland nest – bust into shrieking Sung .
Reaching plate , after cycling fourteen miles and walk thirteen more , my legs were lumpish , my back tyre shredded , and my limb sore from jerk up the saddle to give up the metal wheel ; but I was ample in birdie . I ’d see two dozen Fringilla montifringilla in a hedging , cavort their pitch - and - gold rearing plume ; hear Cathartes aura low above their nesting Mrs. Henry Wood , and a drumming great spotted pecker . In spite of heavy legs , and laboured snow forecast for the next few days , spring had verbalise to me , through the birds .
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