Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Country Diary
One of the joys of autumn for avid wildfowlers is a chance to settle into a ringside seat for the fascinating spectacle of bird migration
Darren Sizer and I looked on as the hobby sailed over the reedbed in which we hid, waiting for greylags that never came. A tailwind caught the speckled, white-cheeked athlete as he carved a perfect turn to starboard. The little falcon was joined by another of his ilk.
In mirror image, they rose together, touched talons then, chittering loudly, darted off as a pair in what we supposed was a sibling game. “Not long till they’ll leave us,” Darren muttered in the succinct, matter-of-fact way he talks about wildlife.
The hobby loves to dine off a dragonfly or a hedgerow goldfinch and seems to take noisy delight in aerobatically snatching a swallow or martin. When the ready pickings of summer are gone, so are they, off to Africa they fly on their rapier wings.
Early autumn on the marsh is a place bar none to watch dual-nationality birds. Reeds bent double with pipits, yellow wagtails nipped about like nodding waiters on the grass. Swallows zipped overhead, snatching the midges that bit at our exposed skin, doubtless grateful that the hobbies had made their exit.
All of these and a host of others congregated on the grazing marsh, awaiting
“The incomers are guided to our shores by the light of the moon and the stars”
the signal known only to birds that it is time to fly south. The closer to the coast you get, the greater the density of these soonto-be migrants becomes. On the eastern coastal strip they mass, stacked like lorries outside Felixstowe docks when Orwell Bridge is closed by high winds. They wolf down protein, readying themselves for their journey to warmer winter quarters.
Fascination
The fascination and wonder in bird migration is no new thing. Aristotle wrote on the subject 3,000 years ago. The Book of Job asks: “Is it by your insight that the hawk hovers and spreads its wings southward?” I suppose one of the reasons why ancients from Plato to Pliny the Elder, or indeed smelly old wildfowlers like Darren and I, marvel about migration is that we know intimately how dainty and fragile these birds are that leave our shores in autumn.
If you find and cradle a swallow, you are immediately struck by its lack of substance. I have never weighed a swallow, but a bird-ringing friend tells me the norm is somewhere around 20g. If you catch a fish of such a weight, your rod barely quivers and you mutter ‘puny tiddler’ as you return it to the water. Yet a 20g swallow covers more than 200 miles each day, every day, on its six-week journey to Africa.
Such tenacity and strength in such a gossamer frame is hard to comprehend. Of course, migration is no one-way thing and the foreshore and marsh are equally well placed to welcome the migrants that make their way here for winter.
On that same marsh, on that same evening where Darren and I bid farewell to the hobbies and swallows, we greeted the first full moon of autumn. A great orange orb, appearing behind the tower of a sail-less wind pump like a rising sun, but without its warmth or spreading light. For me, a full moon is a much-loved event.
In the depths of winter, it spells adventures in monochrome, of ducks drawn low in the silvery, day-like night. But in autumn I relish it all the more because it heralds arrival; that moon lights the way for wildfowl.
Bewick swans wing their way from Russia, whooper swans wheeze to us from Iceland. Pinkfoot, whitefront, barnacle and brent geese come in from Greenland. Ducks shuffle in the Baltic and aim their beaks at Blighty. Around now, from Dunnet Head to Romney Marsh, all becomes alive with incomers, guided to our shores by the light of the moon and the stars in the night sky.
Those migratory endeavours by the fairweather birds of summer seem to pale into mundanity as you stand in the dark on a chilled autumn marsh. Those leaving head to the warmth. Not so the arriving wildfowl and waders. They are our kindred spirits. They stoically put up with, even relish, a British winter. Some feel maudlin when they say goodbye to the swallows, believing it heralds the closing of the year. I am pleased to bid them au revoir, because it means
I can say ‘welcome home’ to the geese.
Richard Negus is a professional hedge layer and writer. He lives in Suffolk, is a keen wildfowler and a dedicated conservationist with a passion for grey partridges.