Mixed feelings as winter closes in
To paraphrase that wonderful creator of word portraits of Victorian Britain, the immortal Charles Dickens, it has for some, been the best of times, for others the worst of times.
If this is the age of wisdom, it is also the age of foolishness, the epoch of mistaken belief and the epoch of incredulity.
It may be the season of light, but more likely as winter fast approaches, it is the season of encroaching darkness and if it is the spring of hope, it may turn out to be the season of despair.
Such mixed emotions flowed, as I watched the sky fill with pink-footed geese, almost stretching from horizon to horizon, the air full of their clamour. Geese are noisy, always in contact with one another, always seeking assurance that all is well throughout the flock especially as a fairly high percentage of these sky-filling skeins are undoubtedly made up of this year’s youngsters. And here they are. They’ve made it across the fearsome North Atlantic once more as countless previous generations of their kind have done the same.
It must be something of a shock to the systems of those youngsters when suddenly they are propelled from their birthplaces high in the Arctic, the only places they have known during their short lives, to be led on a journey of remarkable proportions.
First many, mainly Greenlandbased birds, would have flown to Iceland, where the bulk of them gather before continuing their epic journey across the best part of 1000 miles of hostile ocean. At last landfall is made as Scotland’s coastline is crossed. For most of them Britain will be their home for the forthcoming winter months.
Inevitably, these grey geese somehow bring with them on that journey a sense of those desolate Arctic regions, their wild, high pitched yelping echoing the fast freezing landscape they have forsaken.
The senior members of those flocks showed plenty of wisdom in ushering their inexperienced families across an ocean prone to storms, through the remains of fearsome tropical storms and sometimes up and over storm systems. Geese have been recorded flying at heights approaching 30,000 feet, their fellow travellers from Iceland, whooper swans, sometimes fly even higher.
If wisdom was thus contained in the brains of those leading, senior path-finding geese, then foolishness certainly seems to have flowed through the grey matter of an American huntress who visited the lovely isle of Islay and claimed such trophies as wild goats and … a black-faced tup! Tups are surely not trophies! What next? A Highland bull perchance? That lady I would suggest is certainly living in the epoch of mistaken belief not to mention the epoch of incredulity.
It has clearly not been the best of times for either black-faced sheep or indeed wild goats, which although regarded as non-native, have been in this country since Neolithic times. They have therefore been here a little longer than an animal regarded as an iconic member of our native fauna, the brown hare, which is said to owe its origins in Britain to the next wave of immigrants, those who worked with iron.
Sadly, I hear this much-loved creature is under threat from a resurgence of a strain of myxomatosis to which they are apparently susceptible and which is currently affecting hares in southern England.
I take some comfort from the fact that when that first wave of myxomatosis arrived here in the mid-1950s, it was transmitted through the rabbit population by fleas, which were particularly prevalent in the underground burrows or warrens where rabbits dwell. Hares however, do not dig burrows and so may not be quite as susceptible to carrying fleas as rabbits are. Indeed, hares are extremely hardy animals which always live above ground, the nearest they ever come to creating a place called home, are the depressions in the ground in which they conceal themselves, called ‘forms’.
Nevertheless, that dreaded disease accounted for no less than 99 per cent of Britain’s rabbits and as its shadow moved across our landscape, the sight of rabbits hopping through the fields gradually vanished. Of course, rabbits are also non-native. They arrived here, courtesy of the invading Normans, but until the face of fast improving agricultural husbandry changed our landscape during the 18th and 19th centuries, rabbits had been a relatively inconspicuous presence here.
However, so well did they respond to new food riches provided by the Agricultural Revolution that by the 20th century they had become a major pest to crop growing farmers and gardeners.
The hare was untouched by the introduction of ‘myxi’ back in the 50s, yet now it seems it is vulnerable to this new strain. Hare numbers have been in decline for some time and their British population is currently estimated at 800,000. Recent changes in the way we farm the land are a major cause of their decline although illegal coursing does have some impact.
The world, I suggest, would be considerably the poorer without them and it is worth remembering that hares were highly respected by our hunter-gatherer forbears, their images familiar in the mysterious world of cave art.
Our ancestors had a particularly high regard for the hare’s field-craft. However concerned we may be about the plight of our hares, my season of despair came with the announcement that a group of senior veterinarians and animal welfare experts are again at odds with the Government. They assert that figures issued by the Government do not show a reduction in the number of cattle herds affected by bovine TB in Somerset and Gloucestershire, areas where the disease is so prevalent. The cull of badgers there has removed more than 3500 thousand of these equally iconic animals and is described by some, as slaughter on an industrial scale.
Prior to the cull, these experts explain that in Gloucestershire the incidence of the disease, which had fallen to 6.9 per cent prior to the cull, has risen to 7.1 per cent since culling began. In Somerset worse, for it had fallen to 6.1 per cent and has since risen to 7.2 per cent!
The Zoological Society in London suggests that on the basis of the evidence so far amassed, the culling policy should be abandoned. There have been calls for a programme of vaccination to be introduced instead, a policy that has been adopted by the Welsh Government. Whilst this disease is thankfully absent from Scotland negating any discussions about culling badgers here, this is nevertheless a topic on which we must remain vigilant. One thing however, is for sure: bovine TB will only be brought here by infected cattle. It won’t be brought to Scotland by badgers!
It may seem to be the season of despair. It needn’t be because the cull could be stopped. It may seem a futile hope but I am a supreme optimist. Could such a change of heart become the spring of hope? Otherwise, the danger is that they could end up doing what that American huntress does – killing for killing’s sake!
Geese have been recorded flying at heights approaching 30,000 feet, whooper swans sometimes fly even higher