It is a grimy, grubby, dank dusk soon after the shortest day of the year. A mizzle prevents any view of anything as Nick Acheson squelches along a muddy seabank beside the Norfolk coast. Suddenly, from the far distance, a faint song pierces the gloom, the sound soaring like a choir singing in a vaulted cathedral. Hundreds of high-pitched voices draw nearer – and this vast, desolate landscape of wet marsh and damp air is animated by a glorious cacophony of pink-footed geese. We still can’t see them in the mist, but several thousand birds pass overhead, on their way to roost on the salt marsh. Acheson looks up and sighs. “They are the souls of winter,” he says. “The sight and the sound and the movement and the comings and the goings of winter – and they connect us with the world.”
The spectacle is awesome, free and a rare and precious experience in the modern world: to be a human outnumbered by another species; to witness an abundance of wild birds in one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth (the UK is ranked 12th worst for “biodiversity intactness” out of 240 countries, according to an RSPB study). Invariably, unfortunately, this experience is threatened by anthropogenic menaces: global heating, avian flu and changing farming practices. And so Acheson is determined to bring wider attention to the wonder of geese.
