I wrinkled my nose and felt the biting cold tickling my toes. We had been warm enough walking from the truck to a large and crowded wooden hide but now the chill was finding its way in and it was only a matter of time before it reached my very marrow.

The hide was full of people as were the viewing platforms on either side. Everyone seemed very keen to get the best spot to look out over an expanse of empty water which was dotted with swaying reed beds and gently undulating islands. I hoped whatever we were here to see was worth risking pneumonia for.

‘Is there any more coffee in that—’

Beamish put up his hand, his head cocked to one side.

‘Shush,’ he said, ‘did you hear that?’

I opened my mouth to interrupt his interruption but then I thought I heard something too. It was distant and I had to strain to hear it but there was a distant ‘honk’ on the horizon.

‘They’re coming,’ Dolly whispered, her eyes bright in the fading light. ‘They’re coming.’

The honking gradually increased in volume and was joined by what sounded like hundreds, possibly thousands of others. The noise was intense.

‘Here they are!’ someone who was standing outside shouted above the cacophony. ‘I can see them!’

All eyes were now trained on the sky.

‘They’re pink-footed geese,’ said Beamish, for my benefit. ‘They come here to roost on the marshes. It’s one of Norfolk’s most stunning natural sights.’

‘I hadn’t realised we’d crossed county lines.’

‘Well,’ he said looking at Dolly, ‘I can’t offer her international travel but then, that wasn’t on the list.’

Looking out as the geese poured in, their silhouettes filling the sky for almost as far as the eye could see, I wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or not, but I wasn’t prepared to let wondering about it mar the moment.

‘This is amazing,’ I said to Dolly.

‘It certainly is,’ she agreed.

Then, almost as quickly as it had started, the sound faded and the geese settled, each bird finding its own place for the night.

‘Can we come back in the morning and watch them go, Daddy?’ the young girl next to me asked the man she was with.

‘I’m not sure even you can get up that early, my love,’ he laughed, smiling at Dolly.

‘I can,’ his daughter insisted, bouncing on her toes. ‘I will. There’s no school now so we can sleep in the next day.’

‘Perhaps,’ he told her.

‘Why did they make all that noise?’ I asked Dolly. ‘If this place is their nightly refuge, I would have thought they’d fly in quietly.’

‘They’re in family groups,’ the little girl knowledgeably told me, ‘and their honking keeps them together. It’s their way of making sure they haven’t lost anyone.’

‘Oh right,’ I said, ‘I see.’