Flight of the Wild Geese
Flight of the Wild Geese - By Graham Uney
As someone who has always loved travel and wildlife, this book surprised me. I picked it up expecting a reasonably dull monologue on how clever geese are to fly from Svarlbard to Scotland and back, but the book surprised me. It is really a bit of life story combined with travelogue, including notes and stories about the wildlife he encounters along the way.
The travelogue starts on the banks of the Solway Firth, and travels via Caerlaverock, Scotlands west coast, Strathpeffer, the Faroes Islands to Norway's Arctic Svarlbard Archipelago, ostensibly following the migration of the Barnacle geese. The geese, however, are just an excuse it seems as all the wildlife he encounters is covered in detail, and this book would also cut the mustard as a piece of travel writing.
First sighting of an egret this far north - Global warming?
I also enjoyed the incredibly unusual sighting of an egret on Svarlbard, an extraordinary record and by far the most northerly sighting of this species. The sighting prompted a search that involved much arduous trekking across boulder fields only to prove that in fact it was a Glaucous gull, and not an egret at all.
Flight of the Wild Geese is published by Whittles Publishing, RRP £14.99.
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