• Real Autumn

    Now the breeze is northerly. The branches sway at the change in direction and Birch leaves rain gently down on the garden with every gust. The village lanes are strewn with the leaves of Sycamore. Hazel and Wych Elm. The Field Maples, which have taken on a glowing chrome yellow, are slowly losing their fight to keep their leaves. On the railway line the Poplars are already bare, their wind note has changed in pitch and the sweet smell of leaf decay scents the air.

    As I stack wood – the most Autumnal of tasks – a ragged skein of geese head towards the coast; at least one hundred strong. I watch and listen for a minute or two. The cut logs give off their scent of sap and resin. Indoors, the plaintive notes of French Horn from a Britten Pastoral adds to the Autumnal feel.

  • Thaw and reflection

    The weather softens after a fortnight of snow and frosts.But the hard spell that we have just experienced served to expose the variety of wildlife within the parish. Hunger and the serious business of courtship pushed dog fox and vixen into the daylight. The urban fox has become a common sight in Norwich, but the country fox is a a much more wary creature altogether. Their travels and territories are defined by river and railway line and the thaw releases the strong scent in many places. A sharp frosty starlit night is punctuated by their barks and screams as boundaries are set.

    Elsewhere, Jenny reports whole families of hunting otter in the early morning light. On the arable fields the destructive power of foraging Roe Deer show up as snowy excavations. Teal spring out from out from under the reed fringed bank of the Bure and Grey Geese graze on the whatever passes for exposed vegetation on the Common. In the garden flocks of finches cluster in a frenzy of shuttle visits around the feeders. The wintering Little Egret manage to contrast in shades of white with the decaying snow.

    A short burst of sunshine and the presence of Celandines, Snowdrops and the early shoots of Daffodils in the churchyard promise the approach of Spring. The colour green seems to suddenly return from the overnight thaw.

  • Christmas Eve – Gabriel’s Hounds

    The musical call of a skein of wild geese heralded the morning of Christmas Eve in Brampton. The wonderful sound of their calls, which evokes the music of a pack of hounds, echoed from the woods at Oxnead. Some call them Gabriel’s Hounds in an effort to sum up the magic of their calls. This is considered in some parts of the country as being the sound of the diabolical wild hunt, but I think our geese were much more benign – and probably off in search of sugar beet tops.

  • Winter geese

    At this time of year the key to watching wildlife is to look up and scan the skies. The summer visitors have gone and it is arrival time for the winter migrants. I think it is Brampton’s proximity to the River Bure that puts it in the flight path for migrating birds.

    It is Michaelmas and Wednesday morning bought the first skein of wild geese over the village – or at least the first one that I have spotted so far. Geese fly in the characteristic V-formation skein and this one was heading north for some reason, presumably in search of freshly harvested sugar beet fields. The skein itself was tightly formed by roughly 40 geese, although jostling for position at the back had led to the start of a “W”, albeit temporarily. It was the calls of the geese that grabbed the attention, a very musical yelping like a pack of hounds out for a morning run. You can hear why they are referred to as Gabriel’s Hounds in some parts of England.

    The Brampton skein sounded like to me like Pink Footed Geese, which is a species which spends its winters in North Norfolk, but Grey Geese are easily confused and they may have been some of the Bean Geese which winter in the Yare Valley. I will concentrate more next time.

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