Geese skeins honk in flight in middle of night! A portent?

Mon 8 Apr, 17:12

Did anyone else hear the skeins of Geese passing over Charlbury in the middle of the night before dawn? I was awake listening to an audiobook - as injuries provoke much insomnia and definitely wasn't dozing or in a half-dream. Took me back to childhood in Southern Ontario in the 50s and 60s, an era of then less than half the current global human population and bird numbers 300% higher than they are now. Nostalgia, eh?

But then it hit me. The British Isles is a winter destination for waterfowl such as geese to overwinter, down from the twenty four hour summer sunlit lands of the north! A residence. So why should V-skeins of geese from southern lands be flying so vigorously ever northwards? Few geese migrate northward into Britain. So what is either (a) attracting them further onwards, or (b) and far more sinister - what is driving  them northwards from the southern regions?

Do we see a harbinger of human made Climate Heating in this? So far from my childhood uplift of heart that summer approached - a chill clutched me. A nagging sense of dread our fowl friends portend some climactic change in the forthcoming season of oft-repeated unpatternely weather - do they sense and evade and seek more clement locales as they flew over in the darkness of the night...

Is it time yet for buildings to be designated "cool refuges" in Town? Equipped with air conditioning and emergency generators to run them if an electric Grid is overwhelmed by heat-expanded sagging wires arcing to ground on trees etc or fires? If you've never heard of "Wet Bulb" temperature and atmospheric humidity conditions it's a rather frighteningly low Googled figure isn't it? Very unlikely to for me to see in my few years left but I've kids in their early 20s. And rapidly losing hope of my seeing grandchildren as, being educated kids, they are quite aware of the world we, by our supine inaction and greed, bequeath.

Geese flying north - in England...