Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes

It is a fact. Brent geese buzz. I heard it again last week when they were grazing the cereal fields next to Fishbourne channel. It only happens when they are happy, and then not all the time.

A skein of 300 came off the water looking like one of those swarms of bees you see in July travelling to form a new colony.

Tightly bunched, a mass of black bodies in the sky, they wheeled in a wide arc as they checked the fields for security.

They were all shouting their heads off, yelping with a clamour that sometimes reminds me of a hundred railway trucks slamming their buffers together as they come to a halt.

Up in the sky the brents make memorable patterns like notes of music and when in full song the sound changes again to the wild chorus of travelling birds.

That is a symphony on which dreams are made, telling of the far lands of northern Russia.

But last week that calling stopped very soon as the birds came in to land.

They made little noise on the final approach. Each was concentrating on getting it just right.

With such a large number so close together, the disturbed air from threshing wings causes a mass of eddies and currents to which rapid adjustment is vital.

Paddles down both for airbrakes and landing gear, tails bent forward and wings fully extended for maximum lift at this very slow speed as well as reverse thrust, each goose has quite a job not to hit either neighbour, ground, or both.

You may say they are on automatic pilot because they don't make mistakes except on ice or violent side-gusts. All safely down, necks up like umbrella handles, the birds listen silently for a second or two.

Down go 98 per cent of the heads on to Mr Farmer's crops. Sweet corn stems slide into the gullets. Then the buzzing begins. One of the strangest sounds in nature to my ears and many others have remarked on this peculiar sound. No other bird or beast makes a noise like it.

Except bees.

This feature appeared in the West Sussex Gazette on February 20. To see it first, buy the West Sussex Gazette every Wednesday.