The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
I can’t resist the call of the wild geese, or deer pictured in a woodland setting
Numbers of migrant geese coming to the north east and Montrose Basin are high this year. The Basin is a major staging post especially for the pink-footed geese, which arrive in their thousands from Greenland and Spitsbergen to overwinter in our more temperate climate. Many will fly south, some as far south as Norfolk but many go no further, attracted by the sheltered inland water and availability of food.
Most mornings as I’m at home working on my laptop I hear the geese passing over the house on their way to their feeding grounds. I have to break off – I can’t stop myself – and listen to their bleak calls as their ragged chevrons beat up the coast. I’d hardly started this piece when the most tremendous bugling had me out of my chair, and out the front door, to see an enormous, clamorous skein splitting in two.
Half the skein turned east towards the coast and I could tell from the way they were circling and dropping height that they were preparing to land. The rest carried on northwards. I’d hardly sat down when their “cryin’ voices” had me out of my chair once more. The remainder of the geese had returned and were flying straight in to join the feeding birds.
If it was oilseed rape they were attracted to I’m sure I remember being told that young rape will benefit from being eaten by geese as it will grow again to produce a better crop. If it was the green shoots of winter wheat or barley, the geese pull the whole shoot out by the roots and it will never grow, which will no fair please the farmer!
Often it’s the simple images of nature that give me the greatest pleasure. Inka disturbed a roe deer calf which hopped out of the ditch we were walking up one day. It was quickly followed by the doe and another calfie. The calves will have been born around May/June time and had grown out of the teenage awkwardness when their legs seem too long for their bodies, and they had developed into the elegance of near maturity.
A short distance into the stubble field they suddenly stopped in line – one, two, three – wary but not alarmed, gazing back at me, their large radar ears flickering back and forth, receiving and decoding all the messages from round about. It was the most perfect natural picture and, frustratingly, I didn’t have my camera with me.
The deer weren’t for stopping and passing the time of day, so they quickly set off across the stubble with their distinctive easy loping, bounding strides.
My last sight of them was the white scuts of their rear ends as they disappeared into the cover of the woodland fringe. I have the memory of it all in my mind’s eye and I’m just sorry I can’t share it better with you.
We’ve been using some of our lockdown time to clear out boxes of old papers that accompanied us on our last house move and which we promised each other faithfully we’d check through and empty before the year was out. That year is long past and as the path to hell is paved with good intentions I’m probably well on my way to a much-deserved toasting down under.
One good thing to emerge from our winter spring clean has been discovering Inka’s Owner Registration Certificate from the Kennel Club. From time to time we’re asked how old he is and without his registration certificate have carelessly said – oh, about 12. He was born on September
8 2008, and it’s a relief now to know and be able to say with certainty that he is indeed 12 years old. Although, if you believe in the old saying that a year in a human’s life is equivalent to seven years in a dog’s, he is 84 – quite a grand old man.
He came to us with the imposing Kennel Club moniker of Ronnoc Pride. I’ve no idea who Ronnoc was, but he sounds to me like some legendary deity from labrador mythology. His sire was Fasque Lord Brock and his dam, Reeltoff Jess. Well, you’d expect a dog as noble as Inka to have an aristocratic pedigree.
We had owned his grandfather, Inka One. As I was making up my mind whether or not to take the grandson I felt the same velvety hair when I tickled him behind his ears as I remembered on his grandfather. I was hooked – there was no further discussion needed. My mind was made up for me and the puppy became Inka Two.
Why Inka? – I’m often asked. Black as ink, I say.
He’s beginning to show his age a little bit recently – there’s a touch of white beneath his muzzle. His master is similarly afflicted – the aged pow has gone quite snowy. But eight hours sleep each night, regular meals and plenty of exercise keeps us both young at heart.
The path to hell is paved with good intentions