Farewell For Now to the Geese
April can be a confusing month at WWT Caerlaverock.
On a calendar April is smack bang in the middle of spring and seen in black and white like that it should be clear what to expect when you venture out. Instead it is actually like an airport foyer with wildlife passing through in all directions and on different purposes. We all have different wildlife markers for times of year that help us tune into the seasons and mark progress through the year. In April at Caerlaverock they are a bit mixed and it can feel a bit like turning a tuning dial on a radio – one minute tuning into the winter station, next it is spring, and then summer.
An April day here at Caerlaverock can start at first light with a hard frost. Pink footed geese can be some of the first into the air, leaving their roost out on the Solway mudflats heading in land to feed. Their numbers are down to a few hundred laggards, moving through and fuelling up to head north to Iceland and Greenland and a short and quick arctic summer. The Barnacle geese follow the Pinks out of the roost, leaving later in the day and later in the spring as they have further north to go, to Svalbard, and need to wait for the arctic summer to get going up there.
Hearing the geese going over on a cold morning is is what winters are all about here. As the geese settle onto the fields to fuel up for the travels north, the day warms up and the new arrivals become apparent. Willow warblers, sedge warblers and grasshopper warblers who have all arrived in the last week or so from a winter in Africa change the atmosphere to spring, yelling out their song in the hope of attracting a female and holding a breeding territory. The bird noise backdrop becomes less “let’s keep the flock together” from the geese and more like “oi, how about me and back off” from the new arrivals. The warming air has you shedding layers of clothing and other summer migrants such as swallows and house martins put in an appearance moves you rapidly through the seasons.
Then comes the sound of summer. For me the sound that marks the real transition from winter is the song of the skylark. Though they can start singing while passing through Caerlaverock on the move to breeding areas, the full blast of a skylark chorus with dozens and dozens of them singing out on the Merse sums up summer. Thus a fine April day at Caerlaverock can take you through all of the seasons with a hello to the summer visitors and a fond farewell to the geese, though it won’t be long before they come back again in September.
Written by David Pickett.
Photograph by Alex Hillier.
