The Roar Of The Tundra

The calls of a large colony of Brent geese transport Alan back to trips he enjoyed to that cold, barren landscape, and he takes more than a moment to reflect on the sport he so treasures

- Alan Jarrett

Sitting on a wash in Cambridgeshire, idly reflecting on a successful first half of the season, caused me to drift into a reflective state. Three mallard lay on the grass beside me and the dog was on full alert.

A woodcock passed some 80 yards to my left, surprisingly swift on the wing for such an apparently ungainly bird. A mental note was made to look out for it on another day, as more than once they had eluded me at this spot.

The dog raised her ears slightly and a moment later the soft bugling music of whooper swans came down to me on the breeze. Their calling increased until half a dozen passed through.

There are certain bird calls that are, to me, so evocative and make me think of wilder northern climes. Here, the calls took me back to goose shooting in Iceland, when on every flight the passage of untold numbers of these regal birds was an unforgettable feature of the trip.

The week before, I had been in Kent digging lugworms on the north shore; there had been perhaps 150 dark-bellied Brent geese grazing close to the shore where the zostera grass grows, but now their numbers had quadrupled, a certain sign that there had been a big influx of this noisy little goose.

They were as tame as could be – further reinforcing the theory that they have recently arrived on our shores – doing little more than setting up a constant ‘brupp, brupp’ as I meandered past.