Last on the Card: the Four for the Price of One Edition

The sight of the area round the ponds in our village these days tends to make most of us who live here grumpy, and to sound like fully paid members of Reform UK, the anti-immigrant political party responsible for normalising racism.

It’s Greylag Geese, wherever you look. As you can see.

Each pair of devoted geese (and I have to hand it them, they’re excellent and solicitous parents) has a brood of about nine. They spend much of their time terrorising the other water birds, who have largely done a bunk: or alternatively crossing the main road that bisects the village. This brings cars, bin lorries, the local bus to a halt in both directions as each mother leads her brood slowly across the road, while father brings up the rear. One brood may follow another. Then another brood, from the opposite side may decide to return. I wasn’t quick enough on the draw with this shot. The action is almost over.

It’s not just ducks and moorhens who are terrorised. We are not welcome either.

They only discovered our ponds about three years ago. But every year, last year’s babies return to the place of their birth, and every year, the problem gets worse. Back home, as we clean from our shoes the excrement which the geese deposit in plentiful piles on the pavements, we can be heard to mutter: ‘B***** immigrants, terrorising our ducks and murdering our ducklings. Why can’t they just go back where they came from?‘

Well, that’s not a happy note to end on. So instead, glance back to the header shot. That’s truly the last shot on my camera for May: the sunset from our bedroom window.

For Brian’s Last on the Card.