Sugar beet and the Pink-footed Geese
October 16th, 2009 | by lucy |
At first light, the sound of huge flocks of honking Pink-footed Geese fills the north Norfolk sky as they fly in from their roosts on the Wash. Back in the 1960s, wintering Pink-foots in the UK numbered about 50,000. Nowadays there are over 200,000 and about half of them are found in Norfolk.
The Pink-footed Goose spectacle has largely been created by Norfolk’s sugar beet farms. When the roots are harvested, the tops and tails are left in the field, attracting the geese, who thrive on this high-carbohydrate crop. Sugar beet tops have scant commercial value and provide a useful distraction from the winter-sown crops. What’s more, the geese help out the farmers by weeding the fields and reducing transmission of crop disease from one year to the next.
A good place to observe the geese is at the RSPB Snettisham nature reserve, overlooking the Wash estuary, where they arrive towards the end of October and November from their summer breeding grounds in Iceland and Greenland.
Fears about the impact of last December’s severe weather, the coldest in 100 years, were unfounded. The drop in small bird populations witnessed in the 
The oldest osprey of the UK – and probably the world – has returned to her eyrie in the Scottish highlands. When she left for West Africa at the end of last summer, no one expected her to return. At 26 she’s lived 3 times longer than most female ospreys. In her life she’s laid 58 eggs and hatched 48 chicks, a massive individual contribution to the survival of ospreys in Scotland, where there are still only about 200 breeding pairs. The questions now are if her mate will return and if she is still fertile. Events can be followed on the 
The construction company currently finishing off the Shard building in London, which will be the UK’s tallest skyscraper, recently had to call the council to remove a squatter from the 72nd floor: a young fox. He was surviving on scraps left by builders. After a check-up at the Riverside Animal Centre, the fox has been released on the streets of Bermondsey, having shown the type of curiosity we associate with cats. 
Otters, water voles and fish are all benefitting from the improved quality of the UK’s waterways, now described as the cleanest since the industrial revolution. Since almost disappearing from the wild in the 1970s, otters are thriving, particularly in the south west of England, Cumbria and Northumberland. The population of water voles, highly precarious in the 1990s, is also beginning to recover. The good results of stricter pollution controls and extensive conservation work are set to continue in the new year with the introduction of new European water quality directives. 
