Although north Kent in autumn and winter has an influx of waders and wildfowl, geese, to a certain degree don't tend to come this far down in the kind of huge numbers you can experience in Norfolk. So every year I look forward to the arrival of the brent geese with its far carrying call of the north. Brent geese are the most northerly breeding geese in the world and every autumn travel over 2,500 miles from their tundra breeding grounds in Siberia. Their route follows the coastline of northern Russia, through the White Sea and Baltic Sea and along the North Sea coast and the English Channel. That's quite a trip for the smallest goose to visit our shores!
There are two races of brent goose. The dark-bellied form as pictured here, which winters in western Europe, with over half the population in southern England and the pale-bellied race. The latter breed in Greenland, Svalbard and Canada and winter in Denmark, north-east England, Northern Ireland and the Atlantic coast of the U.S. from Maine to Georgia.
Over the years I have ammased quite a number of images of this species but I'm unsure I will ever truly be able to do this bird the justice it so deserves, but I'll have fun trying, that's for sure. And who knows, perhaps I'll even get to see them at their breeding grounds one day.
