The Pinks are here!!

Well, the first trickle of Pink foot geese has begun as they finish their 500-mile flight from Iceland into our local WWT Martin Mere Reserve in Ormskirk. Once they’ve rested and fed up for two to three weeks, many will carry on south where they will ultimately spend the winter.

The arrival of these few are my indicator that autumn is well and truly upon us and will soon run into the first hard frosts of winter.

Winter is a special time for our "Dad and Lad Adventures," as more and more wildfowl arrive: often mixed in with our resident and migrant birds the odd rarity will turn up.

Over the last few years we’ve had lesser white-fronted goose, red breasted goose, snow goose, red-crested pochard, ring-necked duck and blue-winged teal to name a few.

The added bonus, when the days are bitterly cold, is the thermoses of piping hot tomato soup we take with us for our lunchtime feasts.

What will this autumn and winter bring this year, I wonder?

Many years ago we were staying in a National Nature Reserve famous for its dune systems.

On Friday evening we were treated to to one of the most dramatic sunsets I’ve ever seen in the UK and better still a wildlife spectacular!

Just as the sun turned the low-lying clouds crimson, the first skeins of pink-footed geese started passing overhead.

Their contact "honking" sounding like hundreds of squeaky wheelbarrows as they passed overhead was audible all around us and looking up what a sight we were presented with.

The sky was soon full of skeins strung out like gigantic jet necklaces across the sky.

And it seemed like the entire Icelandic breeding population of pink-footed geese - around 360,000 birds - were all making their way south across the skyscape.

I’d never seen anything like it. The spectacle lasted for over an hour and, as far as I was concerned, was one of the great migrations of the animal kingdom that we were witnessing.

The cottage where we were staying had its power knocked out for a couple of hours when a low flying pink foot managed to hit the power lines.

Scottish Hydro managed to release the bird safely and our power was back on by 11.30pm.

For me and the family we had witnessed one of the most thrilling spectacles in the British Isles: the dusk flight of pink feet.

Seeing and hearing pink feet overhead always bring back memories of pitch-black mornings, with bone-numbingly cold frosts as we headed to the estuary, miles of trudging to get settled before dawn began to break.

Then came cups of piping hot soup and a chance to thaw snuggled up against the freezing wind before the geese took off to forage over the potato and carrot fields.

Then the long tramp back to the car to scrape the frost off the windscreen before the journey home.