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Geese drop
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30.10.1999
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Michael Woods |
At the turn of the last
century a distinguished academic buried himself in a lonely
village on the dreariest, most desolate part of the east
coast. It was, he said, the only spot in England in which,
sitting in his own room, he could listen to the cry of the
pink-footed goose. Only those, he added, who have lost their
souls will fail to understand. For a few weeks, every
autumn, I can experience the next best thing. Before the
stubble is ploughed a flock of feral greylag geese comes to
feed in the fields behind the house. Their voices are not
dissimilar from the pinkfoots' and I can deceive myself that
the unceasing murmur of traffic from the busy highway beyond
them is really the waves breaking on a North Sea shore.
The geese come in from the
gravel pits by the river and, alerted by the chorus of
honking, I go to the window to watch the skeins pitch in to
land (and immediately turn into gaggles!). I am always on
the lookout for the geese 'whiffling'. This is a dramatic
way of making a rapid descent. The geese sideslip and roll
one way and the other as they drop, sometimes even
momentarily turning upside down. This manoeuvre spills the
air from their wings, so they lose altitude quickly but
retain more control than if they simply close their wings
and plummet. It is impossible to see with the naked eye, but
photographs reveal that they keep their heads the right way
up, even when their bodies are inverted, so they do not get
disorientated.
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