Wild Geese

Overview

Wild geese come to the basin country in autumn and leave in spring, in long skeins that cross the sky calling. Their coming tells the Basins the year has turned. They winter on the wet meadows, the stubble, and the fens, and they are the lord's fowling right, the poacher's net, and the cheapest feast a Reedfolk household knows.

Appearance

A wild goose is a little smaller than a yard goose and far sleeker: grey-brown, finely barred, with a paler breast, a white rump, and pink or orange legs and bill. The grey kind is commonest; a smaller dark kind with a black neck and white cheeks comes in hard winters.

They fly in long lines and wavering V shapes, high over the valleys, and call continually in loud, cackling honks that can be heard long before the skein is seen. On the ground a flock grazes heads down, with a few birds always standing upright on watch.

Habitat and Range

Wild geese winter in the open wet country of the Confluence Basins and the Lower Serath: the flood meadows grazed in common, the harvested fields, the fens and reed edges of the Reedmere. They roost on open water and sandbars at night and fly out to feed at dawn. Where they go in summer nobody in the Basins knows; they come from the north, over the forest.

Behaviour and Temperament

Geese graze grass, winter shoots, spilled grain, and roots. They live in flocks of families and stay together on the wing. They are wary, quick to take alarm at a walker or a dog, and hard to approach in the open.

Life Cycle

Geese pair for life. They raise their young in the summer country nobody has followed them to and bring them south in the family when they come. A wild goose may live twenty years.

Uses and Dangers

They give meat, fat, and down. Fowling for wild geese with nets, decoys, and hawks is a lord's right on his own meadows in the Basins; poachers net them at dawn anyway, and fowlers on the Serath's sandbars take them under the towns' leave. Reedfolk take them from the reed edges in hard winters, when they are easy to approach. Their cost is grazed winter wheat, which farmers grumble about and lords ignore.

Lore and Belief

Basin farmers reckon the seasons by them: the first skein over in autumn means the harvest must be in, and their leaving in spring means the fields can be sown once the rise falls back. A skein flying low and calling at night foretells a hard winter. Children are told the geese fly to the edge of the world for the summer, which may be as close to the truth as anyone has come.

Where It Appears

• Overview: Animals