Over-sized and over here
Don Roberto always said that this airt was in his mind a shadowy place, so often made all the more mysterious by the almost supernatural presence of creeping banks of mist.
Like some gigantic, amorphous fungus advancing insidiously and silently across the landscape, during recent days those mists have repeatedly hidden the true nature of the landscape from us.
Once upon a time, of course, it wasn’t mist but the sea that advanced as stealthily to drown the valley, obliterating everything in its path. If Cunninghame Graham had still been around as 2017 emerged his description would indeed have been confirmed.
In the last few days, right across the low ground of his beloved Carse, has hung an all-embracing white sheet of seemingly impenetrable mist, ephemeral yet visually surprisingly solid.
Its cloying mass blotted out the grey-green fields, the livestock picking away at the sparse winter vegetation, the drystane walls, the post and wire fences, what is left of the once proudly manicured mosaic of hedgerows and the now leafless trees. It completely obscured the white-washed farmhouses and even the usually obvious red or green tin roofs of many a farm building.
This slow-moving leviathan seemed somehow to have a life of its own. Although it hung heavy and still across the low ground, at each side of the valley it seemed somehow to be making a real attempt to absorb and consume that too. At its frayed edges strands of mist broke free from the main body as if attempting to colonise those higher places, which stood above the cloying white mass like floating, isolated islands.
Yet those islands seemed to resist any notion of takeover. Those wandering wisps, like craftily creeping outriders, advanced upwards only to be eliminated, evaporating and disappearing into nothing as they unsuccessfully reached for the sky.
More distantly, where the Highland mountains rise to the north, pockets of mist lingered in hollows as if waiting to join the main army in order to promote further advancement and perhaps take over the whole landscape. They waited in vain, unused, ultimately unlinked, isolated and seemingly unwanted.
But if that giant cloud gave the impression that its very presence was exterminating life within and beneath its allpervading cloak I was wrong. Suddenly and without warning there echoed from somewhere deep within its veiled skirts the sound of gabbling geese, muffled at first but slowly growing in volume as its perpetrators clearly took to the air, unseen but increasingly filling the otherwise still and silent air with their clamour.
Pink-footed geese are seldom silent. They come from their Arctic homelands to this part of Scotland to pick away at the stubble and to graze the farmers’ fields during the winter months.
But in such mode all heads do not go down. Some remain upright, scorning the chance to eat. There are always those sentinel geese which take responsibility for the flock’s security and so remain constantly alert, ready to give loud and instant warning of impending danger or threat. Grazing geese are always restless, ever ready to take to the wing and decamp.
Furthermore they seem to have a sixth sense which enables them to navigate safely, even when it is dark or when the mist obscures their surroundings. I often hear them flying over me, en route to their watery night-time roost. I can even hear the sound of their beating wings, usually without being able to see a single feather of them.
But from elsewhere behind that great, cloying curtain now issued more sounds of geese. This was not the high-pitched clamour of wild pink-footed geese but the deeper, more sonorous sound of the increasing legions of Canada geese which, over the past few decades, have become endemic here, much to many folks’ displeasure. Theirs is an altogether less attractive sound.
These lumbering, low-flying geese are not so much wild as feral. Canada geese, accused by the farming community of trashing winter grazing, owe their origins in Britain to the design ambitions of Capability Brown and many other landscape designers. These were the creators of the “new look” great estates which, fuelled by the wealth generated by the Industrial Revolution, landscaped so many of the ancient landed estates.
These designers were sticklers for detail and imported Canada geese to make them a living part of the planning process as embellishments upon the lakes they created, along with a variety of exotic ducks. Inevitably these decorative populations grew and spilled over into the surrounding countryside so that a tenuous presence soon became permanent.
There was a time, as the Second World War broke out, when the shooting of Canada geese was encouraged. The idea was that it might provide a much-needed source of extra meat and offer a means of control. But with their low, ponderous flight they offered very inferior sport. So we are stuck with these aliens. Those roaming blankets of mist may temporarily conceal them but those large, black and white aliens are there, sailing the waters of the loch like some foreign armada.
They may be handsome birds but they are, I’m afraid, largely unloved.