High on a lonely hill in the late afternoon and deep calls drift from a distant flight of swans as they flap their way slowly across the vastness that is the mire at Ferjubakki. Thin grasses bend in the chill breeze that blows from the far-off snowy mountains. There’s little sign of man’s presence here other than a broken down wire fence and a massive radio-mast on the hill-top: a technological intrusion bizarrely misplaced in this natural landscape.
Down by the distant river, Golden Plovers flush from the flood meadows, wheeling and tumbling before once again settling amongst the grazing ponies horses.
The crisp air seems to enhance the autumnal colours of the landscape, painted a thousand shades of golden brown. But soon the sun starts slowly to slip down the sky and browns turn rose- and orange-tinted. Then all too soon a monochrome dusk dismally seeps the remaining colour from the landscape.
In far-away fields, flocks of Whitefronts speed the end of their evening feeding before an eventual round of head-shaking indicates its time to fly to roost. Some trickle away in small flocks; others fly up together as whole fields suddenly empty. The sky is soon full of calling geese, a few flying across the cratered face of the rising moon. Can they really go that far? Sometimes it feels like it.
As the geese arrive at their mudflat roost, they cascade to the ground, almost falling out of the sky, twisting and turning to rapidly loose height. Latecomers pack in close to the early arrivals — already with their heads tucked deeply away, warm out of the brisk cold.
Dusk is now far advanced. Distant calls come from the last few stragglers, but its now getting hard to see where these birds are.
Too soon, night has fallen and the geese sleep — seemingly undisturbed by the occasional passing of a shooting star high above and an ethereal auroral glow discharging across the dark night sky.
The end of another beautiful day.