There’s a hovercraft on the sand, skirts deflated, dumped like a beached whale. Behind it, the pier stretches into the Solent. The air has the dull taste of off-season resort, with background notes of seaweed and vinegar. Welcome to Ryde.
We eat fish and chips, fending off the attention of a hungry herring gull. The clicks and whistles of 20 starlings float towards our ears from over the road. A pied wagtail, manic wind-up toy, scurries beside us. Stop, start, whirr.
Incoming, above the hovercraft, over the pier, angling their wings to combat the gusting wind, a phalanx of 10 birds. Brent geese – our smallest, my favourite. Tubby things – graphite body, white arse, black neck and head accessorised with a delicate white necklace.
They land, joining a loose group of their brethren straggling in clusters along the shoreline. As the tide recedes their numbers will swell, gathering in the shadow of the laser quest and the bowling alley, their timetable regulated by the ebb and flow of the sea.
At its highest, the water surges over the seawall, wetting the unwary promenader’s feet; at low tide you contemplate walking across the mud to Portsmouth. And in that mud, there’s sustenance for the hungry brents. They patrol the strandline, busy and efficient, grazing on the vegetation left behind by the retreating water: eelgrass, marsh samphire, sea aster. That’s the good stuff.
As they feed, they talk. A low‑key, conversational bleating. Not for them the greylag’s honk or pinkfoot’s high-pitched “wink”. Their call is lower, a muttered “warrup”. En masse, it becomes a gargling sound described by conservationist Tim Stowe as like “a cement mixer being cleaned with bricks”.
Brents are loyal birds, mating for life and returning to the same wintering sites in family groups. About 100,000 of them come here from Siberia each year – one of the longest migrations. And once here, the family dynamic remains close-knit. We watch a gander see off an unwary intruder, head and neck low, striding forwards with vigorous intent. You do not mess.
Dusk falls. We head off, the babble of these wonderful birds receding with the tide. Winter is nothing without them.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
