When can I see overwintering geese?

Arriving from all points north anytime from mid-September onwards, the geese are attracted to Britain’s comparatively mild winter climate, which is believed to be boosted by about 5 ̊C, thanks to the warming impact of the Gulf Stream.

An undoubted natural joy, as autumn hands over the baton to winter, comes from watching the movements of large skeins of pink- footed, white-fronted and greylag geese etched across the sky, as they shuttle between their roosting grounds and feeding areas. 

Where are the best places to look for overwintering geese?

Often choosing to roost at night in the comparative safety offered by estuaries, these ‘grey’ geese will often move inland at first light to feed, which in the case of pink- footed geese sees them moving to barley or sugar-beet fields, where the crop stubble or remaining beet-tops offer rich pickings. The geese tend to then return to their roosts before dusk descends – these are the best times to catch the astonishingly aerobatic spectacle of ‘whiffling’. 

What is ‘whiffling’?

A term relatively unknown outside of ornithological circles, whiffling describes the geese’s technique for rapidly descending out of the sky with a zig-zagging and side-slipping motion which allows them to effectively ‘spill’ the air out of their wings.