Around one hundred and fifty Canada geese arrived yesterday in the early evening, appearing from the direction of the Isle of Wight.  They were letting everything and everyone know they were coming with that raucous, noisy honking that ripples too and fro throughout the flying flock. Two small resident groups already here, frequent a pond on farmland adjoining Exbury Gardens and it is beginning to feel like the start of a Canada goose convention. I watched a pair of shell (shocked) ducks seemingly retreating out of their way.

These naturalised Canadians first settled in England in the 17th Century when they were introduced as attractions in the gardens of country estates and perhaps our local flocks still have some distant race memory of ornamental forebears on the Exbury Estate? I shall have to ask if any were ever kept hereabouts.