Power Station White-fronts
by Alan Jarrett

In the Southeast geese and marshes traditionally seem to go together like bread and cheese. All that changed last season when a friend invited me to a join him to shoot over a great tract of arable on the Kent/Sussex border; there were lakes close by, but in the far distance 'yes' marshes.
It was not however typical goose country, but none the less enjoyable for all that. I was soon to learn that there were plenty of geese in this part of the county, and they were just as difficult to get on terms with as their North Kent cousins.

THIS SEASON
This season the call came again: 'The geese are on the wheat if you want to come'. We duly went (try stopping me!), we saw, but did not conquer - for the geese were mostly on the lakes and did not want to come out to feed at all.

The second call found me unavailable. Predictably this time the geese did come, and they got seven - a mixture of Canadas and greylags. The most interesting news was that about 100 white-fronts had arrived in the area.

When the next call came all was set. There were about 1,000 wigeon on the wheat, plus the usual throng of geese; the plan was to shoot the wigeon if we could, then await the arrival of any geese.
Good plan, and if somebody had explained it to the wigeon then so much the better! They went off to the north in three great waves, skimming the arable at no more than head height, and not a shot was fired at them.

Later on, huddling in the bending phragmites reeds out of the wind, the excited yelping of white-fronts came down to me on the wind. The immediate panic of finding a skein of 30 geese bearing down on you with the wind in their tails as you frantically try to change to heavier loads is an emotion like no other; yet on this occasion they turned back across the wind in what would be a circuit to bring them back to feed on the field, which allowed me a fraction of extra time to gather myself.

The first shot missed hopelessly, but as they climbed in the way only white-fronts can the second shot sped true and two birds crumpled. One bird hit the hard frozen ground, with the other into the adjacent stream: both lay quite dead and were easily retrieved, whilst they were both birds of the year and as such this was their first, and now final, trip to the traditional over wintering grounds. Later my diary showed me that these were my first European white-fronts for 10 years.

An hour or so later the white-fronts returned in larger numbers. Soon two big lots of Canadas joined them on the wheat, and after a while we put them off, lest they attract every goose to come near. This ruse worked, for the next skein of Canadas came right on through and lost one of their number to my neighboring Gun.

PATIENCE
Waiting in these situations is for the patient, and for someone like myself who has been wildfowling for over 30 years patience is one ability that exists in abundance. I am as patient as the next man, and a good deal more patient than many, so this was not a problem.
This then allows plenty of time for peaceful contemplation, and an enjoyment of the surroundings. Wildfowlers are often good naturalists, one reason being perhaps because we have plenty of opportunity to observe what is going on during frequent lengthy lulls in the action.

Far off the nuclear power stations seemed almost insignificant, despite their great bulk; this bulk was now utterly dwarfed by distance. In the middle distance a line of pylons bearing vast power cables marched their way across the landscape, and but for them it would have been possible to imagine yourself in any flat land. To sit in the reeds and look at the two geese was the time to reflect on their short lives: how they had survived the high arctic summer, and the perils of that far off northern land; they had followed the adult birds on the southward migration, and reached a land with a more hospitable climate, and finally they had met their end here on a Kentish field. They represented the epitome of the wild frozen north.

Later still, as the sun rose higher and highlighted the persistent frost which blanched the leaves of the wheat and showed every sign of lingering all through the short winter's day, the spirit voices of the tundra came across the wind. Soon five great white forms passed along the lakeside on their journey to feed: they were whooper swans, and their incredibly evocative voices spelt wildness above almost all others.
The wind was cold and cutting, and walking back I realised that this was as nothing compared to the chill winds of the northern land from which the swans and geese had come. There was a strange moodiness in the air, scarcely born of this time or place, and was a moment and a feeling not to be readily forgotten. But of course it could have been in my imagination!