What's good for the goose...

Soldier Palmer bolsters sporting and farming relations with a successful feral greylag flight

Greylag geese are on the rise. Every year brings more to the ponds and pools of the parish and they rarely fail to produce healthy, swaggering teams of youngsters. It would take a brave fox to confront a protective pair of adult geese and, once goslings are sufficiently well grown to survive a period of cold weather, they seem almost indestructible.

Under these favourable conditions, it’s no surprise that their numbers should continue to rise. Greylags were fairly scarce 20 years ago, but they have started to spread their wings.

Still branded as feral, greylags have a poor reputation in this part of the world. Many of these birds were reintroduced by wildfowlers across the UK after their numbers declined during the 20th century.

Scientists make a distinction between the original native birds and those that were introduced, but the difference is not always obvious. They may all look like orange-beaked grey geese, but greylags formed the basis for most domesticated goose breeds and there is a fair amount of complex hybridisation at work.

I once took a fancy to keeping geese in the farmyard at home. I bought a pair from a poultry auction and set them up with their own pen in the shed. I had been reliably informed by the breeder that neither goose could fly, but as soon as I opened the door, they flew away into the distance. That was a nasty surprise, but it was even more extraordinary that my escapees flew down to the good fields by the estuary where they lived alongside the local greylags for some time.