The view, I thought, appeared much as it would to a young barnacle goose. I was diving out of a blustery, dove-grey sky, my wing tips tipping cloud. Far below I could see the browns and greens, the heather and grass, of a big, low-lying Hebridean island. To the east lay the Scottish mainland. From the west the ocean, whipped by a stiff breeze, drove tiny white horses on to long sandy shores. The Atlantic rollers were just visible beneath my wings.
But my wings were manufactured by Saab. Nose pressed to the window, I was aboard a 30-seater twin-prop passenger plane heading from Glasgow airport to the landing strip on the island of Islay. I would land there at ten in the morning on Monday, 13 October.
About 30,000 barnacle geese had landed just ahead of me this month. They had come from Greenland; I had come from Derby. My small voyage of discovery was the last of my adventures as the presenter of a five-part series for BBC Radio Four on migrating species called Moving On. My programme about eels has already been broadcast, as has my account of a feathered burrow-dweller and transcontinental aviator, the Manx shearwater. The third and the fourth programmes, about migrating butterflies and basking sharks, will be broadcast at 2.45 p.m. over the coming Sundays.
Barnacle geese will be my fifth and final theme. Islay is winter home to about two thirds of the planet’s entire population of Greenland-based geese (a separate tribe come from Siberia, wintering on the east coast of Scotland). This distinguishes them from most of Britain’s other migrating species. Sensible animal tourists flee our winter, departing for sunnier climes. Islay’s barnacle geese actually choose to come here in winter — for whatever the horrors of the Scottish climate, they are less horrific than winter in Greenland.
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