The echoing screech of swifts hurtling between the houses is a distant memory. Some swallows and martins have hung around, wittering away on telephone wires over the Cheshire Lines, or hunting flies above the salt marsh north of Southport’s defunct pier. Our summer visitors have largely flown, but autumn has its magic. The recent harvest moon coincided with the annual spectacular provided by large numbers of noisy, feathered visitors.
They arrive from breeding grounds in Greenland, Iceland and Norway. In dribs, drabs and then droves. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of honking pink‑footed geese flying in huge V formations. Passing overhead, their undercarriages lit by the low autumn sun, I notice the chaos, the constant movement from one line to another. Some disengage, change direction, loop back. At any moment, geese will be flying towards all points of the compass, but I trust them to know where they’re going. In the mornings – in no rush – they travel inland to graze the fertile, peaty fields of the west Lancashire plain. At dusk they head the other way, seeking safety on marsh and mudflat. The RSPB Marshside and Martin Mere wetland centres are favoured spots, where those that don’t move on to winter in Norfolk will be joined by large flocks of whooper swans and rare visitors such as ruddy shelduck and – such stuff as dreams are made on – Wilson’s phalarope.
Sefton’s is a Viking coast. They came in the 10th century, settling in places such as Crosby, Toxteth, West Derby and Formby, where I grew up. I picture the invaders rowing in off the Irish Sea, down the River Alt and disembarking in a tiny village they named Fornebei. Were they following the geese, or was it the other way around?
Mum, in her 80s now, has witnessed this autumn treat from the same house for all of those eight decades. Saturday gone, my brother and I sat, transfixed, on the boundary edge at Sandy Lane, Hightown, as skein after skein flew in off the coast, heading north and east, the final overs of the cricket season serenaded by a unique cacophony.
• This diary was amended on 1 October 2024. The sub-heading of an earlier version said “as the days lengthen”; this has been corrected to “shorten”.
• Country diary is on Twitter/X at @gdncountrydiary
• 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 20% discount
