Unforgettable wildlife encounters: UK coastal marshes

"Of all the wonderful sights and sounds of the season, few are as potent as the avian spectacles of numbers around wetlands. Whether it’s a swan fall, concentrations of waders corralled by the tide, skeins of geese or gulls, or the pre-dusk gathering of a starling murmuration, there’s something grand and compelling about huge flocks in flight. Partly it’s the movement – like waves, living flames, or wind-rippled foliage, it seems to both soothe and stimulate.

But flocks also draw our attention to the sky and thus borrow something from other celestial spectacles like sunsets, supermoons, auroras or meteorite showers. And there’s the further marvel that each throng is made up of individuals – beings not altogether unlike us.

I can’t see winter geese without remembering an ill-advised October half-term holiday to Norfolk with two other families in 2014. Two of the adults were teachers, including my husband, both suffering the usual autumn term burnout. The house was too small, we were sharing rooms with kids and babies, and everyone was tired and cranky."

Making memories in nature

"After another sleep-deprived night, my three-year-old son woke before dawn, just as a teething one-year-old dropped off. My only thought was getting him out the house before he woke everyone up. I hauled clothes over pyjamas, wrestled him, protesting, into his car seat and drove to a lay-by on the coastal marshes. I cut the engine, wound down the windows and let cold air fill the car.

He paused, mid-grumble, as ripples of unfamiliar sound from the still-dark sky filled his ears. Pink-footed geese, recently arrived, settling into an early routine.

The sky lightened. Pinkened. We got out of the car and I lifted him onto the warm bonnet. He lay back the way some people watch planes at the end of runways. Broad skeins flew over us, one after another, and another and another. Scores, hundreds, thousands of birds.

After half an hour the clouds boiled with colour and his upturned face glowed with it. The soundscape was layered: as each wave passed, we could hear the next coming. The repetition made that dawn seem endless – an audiovisual hall of mirrors, unreal, hyperreal, timeless. The strangest thing is he doesn’t even remember it now. But I’m sure it is there in some part of his mind – a subconscious well of memory from which future dreams might be drawn."

Dr Amy-Jane Beer is a biologist, writer, editor, outdoor enthusiast and mum from North Yorkshire.

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