Many years ago, we attended a “Dawn Flight” experience at the WWT reserve at Martin Mere to experience the spectacle of the wintering flock of Pink Footed Geese leaving their roosting grounds for the day. It was a frosty foggy January morning and freezing cold – sadly that is about as much as I personally remember about it – dark, cold, very noisy and did I say cold – it was really, really cold!  As time passes memories fade, so last year I decided we would have another go but missed the dates completely. Fast forward to October 2017, and (as I had been much better organised this year and bought the tickets early!) off we set at 6am to try the whole experience again. My first surprise of the day was just how dark it was at 6am and how long it stayed dark. Second surprise was the weather – mid October and at 6am it was already a balmy 18 degrees and not raining! Walking through the grounds of Martin Mere to the Ron Barker Hide was almost like being in the Blair Witch project – very dark, rustling noises in the trees and the occasional sound of gunshot in the distance – unnerving to say the least!
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Thanks to our very knowledgeable warden, we discovered there were approximately 15,000 pink footed geese currently sat on the mere outside the hide. There were also considerable amounts of newly arrived Whooper Swans.  These swans were so new to the mere that the wardens had not yet determined whether they had just finished their migration from Iceland or whether they were local feeders who had re-established themselves. Could we tell whether they were lethargic? The difference would become apparent if they did not take off and chose to stay on the mere to rest from their migratory flight