They're back

The Barnacle Geese have come to Uist for their winter hols. Always impressive, there was a flock of over four hundred on Baleshare today generally bossing the place and making a lot of noise. Even the hunters stopped short of their end of the island.
Spectacular birds that have probably spent the summer breeding in Greenland before coming here for a bit of winter warmth - and to annoy the crofters by grazing on their lands. It is a big issue here and one where conservation falls out with a lot of the locals. With those locals being so instrumental in preserving the machair it is an important dichotomy to resolve, currently being done clumsily by financial recompense.
Bizarrely they were named Barnacles before the shell Barnacles. The geese Barnacles were though to have hatched from those shells - Goose Barnacles in fact - which is why the shells are also called barnacles. It seems the wrong way around nowadays but no-one ever really solved the chicken and the egg conundrum.
The good news was that as a consequence of this purported life style, you were allowed to eat the goose on the meat fasting day of Friday - a change to fish!