COUNTRY LIFE
ONE result of dyeing the tail-feathers of the wild geese caught in rocket nets by the Severn Wildfowl Trust on the Dumbles has been to discover the extreme variability of their migrations during the winter. So complex are they and so loose is the interchange between one flock and another that no precise schedule of movements can be determined. These geese are as unstable as waters as vagrom as the winds, as undisciplined as impulse, and flocks have been known-to return to Scot- land in early autumn after having come south to England. This must be disconcerting to the scientific mind, but is decidedly pleasing to us laymen. When we hear the gongs of the wild geese clanging down from the middle air, we rejoice that they are free as nature first made man," • as we do at the trumpets of the Leonora Overture, proclaiming another kind of freedom. It is fine to think that these proud birds have no Use for time-tables or travel on invisible railway lines from station to station as'- tropistic responses dictate and science would be so happy to map.
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