Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes

BRENT geese are back in the harbours. I watched them in October flighting a little out to sea in East Anglia, coming south along the Suffolk coast.

They were in no hurry, it seemed. They settled, flew on again, settled once more a mile farther on.

Those could even have been the same ones I saw a few days later off Beachy Head, straggling along like a gaggle of school children vaguely wandering along the pavements out of school.

Somebody else saw them coming in off the sea at the mouth of Chichester harbour at about the same sort of time. Clamouring with that lovely rounded tone lower pitched than the pinkfoot, a little smoother than the greylag. They know their way around.

A hundred or more flew up off the grassland and cereals at West Wittering to drink fresh water at Fishbourne.

How the wildfowl love that spring-fresh flow that winds everlastingly out of its seam south of the south Downs and whells up near the old A27 road, then flows with an almost pale blue tint of chalk down through the reedbeds and out into the mudflats.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette December 5