For twenty five years I did a monthly WeBS (Wetland Bird Survey) count each year between the months of September and March at West Wittering, which forms part of Chichester Harbour in West Sussex. I commenced the counts when I lived in Sussex and carried on when I moved to Oxfordshire.
The time came when I knew it was right to hand over to someone else and I have never returned to West Wittering since I ceased the counts but with the impending lockdown on Thursday I decided to make just one more visit, partly out of curiosity but more out of sentimentality.
West Wittering saw me through some hard times and a period of great unhappiness. Counting the geese provided a welcome relief from my troubles, for one day a month at least, and I have looked upon the brent geese of West Wittering with affection ever since. In the latter years I did the counts with a great friend, John Reaney, a bird artist who lived in Brighton and who died just over a year ago and whose company I miss greatly to this day. My visit this Wednesday would be a journey of reminiscence, as if somehow being at West Wittering I could regain something, maybe just an echo, of that which is now forever lost.
West Wittering provides a winter home to a large gathering of Dark bellied Brent Geese and any number from a thousand to two thousand can be found here in the winter, feeding in a scattered flock on grass fields especially kept for them to graze, so they do not encroach on surrounding farmland.Their presence and constant contralto growling as they communicate and bicker amongst themselves are part of the winter scene here and inevitably brought memories flooding back.
Today was approaching perfection with little wind and a bright sun, the air cold and still after an overnight frost. I had arrived early, conscious of the dog walkers that from a birders point of view plague this place, although fortunately the geese are protected from major disturbance by a wire fence. Still, it is noticeable how the geese are relatively used to human presence and are untroubled by me stopping to look at them but become very alarmed at the sight of a dog however distant. The memories of the predatory Arctic Foxes that roam their breeding grounds each year are obviously not forgotten.
Brent Geese occur in four forms, three are recognised as subspecies and one (Grey bellied) still lacks subspecific status.The four are as follows:
Dark bellied Brent Goose Branta bernicla bernicla which breed in Siberia and winter in eastern and southern coastal areas of England.
Pale bellied Brent Goose Branta bernicla hrota which breed in Arctic Canada, Greenland, Svarlbard and Franz Joseph Land and winter mainly in Ireland and occasionally western coasts of England with another population wintering in Northumberland.
Black Brant Branta bernicla nigricans breeding in northern Canada, Alaska and northeast Siberia and usually wintering along the Pacific coast of North America.
Grey bellied Brent Goose breeding on Melville and Prince Patrick Islands in western Arctic Canada and wintering on the Pacific coast of the USA
Sometimes the flock at West Wittering contained a pleasant surprise such as a Red breasted Goose in the winters of both 2007 and 2009. For many years I would always say to John 'Wouldn't it be nice if a Red breasted Goose turned up with the Brents?' but it never happened and it was only towards the end of my years of counting that I was finally rewarded and what a day that was. A Taiga Bean Goose was another great find during a count in a howling gale and rain, and Barnacle Geese turned up on a number of occasions but we could never be sure if they were wild or not. Individuals, in the form of the other two races of brent geese, Pale bellied Brent Goose and Black Brant would also occasionally appear, with the latter almost annual for some years and on one rare occasion arriving paired with a Dark bellied Brent Goose and bringing their hybrid young with them.
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| Adult Red Breasted Goose at West Wittering - February 2009 |
Adult Pale bellied Brent Goose at West Wittering
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| Adult Black Brant at West Wittering |
Today as I scanned through the geese scattered across the short grass there was to be no such pleasant surprise but I found something just as unusual and the like of which I never saw during my twenty five years of counting here. It was a leucistic Dark bellied Brent Goose. Its pale plumage rendering it highly conspicuous amongst its darker companions. The normal black head, neck and breast were replaced with pale brown and the rest of the body a dull off white rather than grey.The bill was dark brown but the legs and feet were a paler orange brown. Someone on Twitter suggested such a goose be christened 'Cappucinno Goose' which I rather like.
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Colour ringing has shown that some individual geese, despite their long and hazardous migration can survive for over ten years and most are faithful to the same favourite fields each winter. Most birds remain paired in their winter quarters, both those without young and those with and one can often observe separate families bickering with each other if they come too close, with the gander rushing with neck extended and bill open through the water or across the grass. It is a common and often comical sight in the large gatherings at West Wittering.
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| Adult Dark bellied Brent Goose with juveniles which can be identified by the prominent pale bars across their wings.The presence of juveniles this year would indicate that the breeding season was a successful one. |
But enough of the facts. The reason I was here was more than the sum of that. It was to take a sentimental journey, stimulated by the geese, to recall happy times with my friend John and the solace that his friendship and a still beautiful part of Sussex brought to me.
As the flock of geese swung high over me in the sky, to land on the sea and swim on the rising tide I found the happiness and contentment I sought and that was all that mattered.
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