Pig Tour

 Friday, September 11

Yesterday, I spent an inordinate - and abortive - time, touring and scanning the pig fields of the Cockley Cley area.  The first pass of the spread out fields was binocular search only, the second scoping through undergrowth, between tree trunks and small gaps in the hedge. None of the fields had gateways where we could stop, all the searching had to be done from the roadside, with due attention to other traffic.

I've never spent so much time viewing through and past mobile pork and bacon. They were all breeding sows or butcher fattening animals. One field held two mighty Saddleback type boars, their back legs bowed to make room for their impressive appendages. I saw a plethora of corvids, largely Rooks, a family of Pied Wagtails, three Mistle Thrushes - and nothing else. I decided to call it quits when I started inspecting tails and their differing stages of curliness. The looked for Stone Curlew which collect here in the Autumn, were not there for us to-day. Maybe an earlier start would have helped. The field I'd map spotted for Ron two years ago, when he was successful is not being used this year. The pigs make such a mess with their ploughing snouts that they need moving on regularly.

Just as well we didn't go to-day after my six weekly visit to Cromer Eye Clinic. I have large black floaters in my left eye - which has a leaking capillary needing Lucentis injections to keep some vision going. The pigs would have looked like Dalmations.

We did come across the largest congregation of white geese I've ever seen. 

 

As we stopped, a tractor drove towards them, causing a fast, synchronised goose-step of Persil white duvet filler to their own cackling accompaniment .

 

The tractor drove away, they turned in unison, and high-stepped it back from whence they came.