We all know how the film footage runs. The sound of honking draws the camera to a sky bruised with autumn, and then we see the geese. The flock stays in shot for a while, their beautiful, seemingly effortless skein rippling over the world. Returning to the ground, the camera finds the human face looking upwards, wistful with the unspoken thought – another year has somehow slipped by. We were on the drive when we heard the geese. There they were, hundreds of feet up. Their faint cries formed a gentle music of two-note calls. Were they pink-footed geese on their way down to the waterlands of Norfolk? If so, they must think they’ve reached the Promised Land – the temperature in Spitsbergen, an island to the north of Norway where many of our pink-footed geese come from, is c