Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Country Diary
The strategy of leaving small wooden boxes on the shingle to protect exposed tern chicks from predation by gulls is a ridiculous scheme
We have lived on the North Norfolk coast for as long as I can remember. I recall the most wonderful childhood of summers in bare feet, boating and fishing, whitebait netting and constantly being nagged to put shoes on. The house was a cottage with ramshackle sheds and a beautiful barn on the edge of the world, protected by an earthen sea wall, beyond which lay thousands of acres of salt marsh, tidal creeks, sand and freedom.
Winters, which then seemed to start a little earlier, were equally marvellous and from the age of about eight I started with walking-up redshank with a single-barrelled .410 until told to either stop shooting them or eat every one. I stopped. My first goose was at morning flight, with my father on the way to school. Hiding behind the sea wall, the sound of low geese coming closer and closer, peeping over the top through the suaeda bushes, waiting until the skein was right on top of me. Then up and pop. The leading bird crumpled.
The joy of holding that enormous, ancient and practically inedible greylag, marvellously, still goes on. Here I am, farming seaweed and oysters in the same place. I see numerous swallow flit and hawk the fly above the waters of the high tide, where the land meets the skies along the greens below the house. It looks to me
“One of the spits was inundated and the chicks were washed off and drowned”
as if it’s been a good breeding season. I know my two pairs have raised two broods each with a total, fledging and flying, of 14 — that’s not bad.
The sandwich terns, however, have had a horrible time out on the far point. These elegant creatures migrate on to our coast in early April, sometimes late March, brushing winter away with their wild skreaking call and heralding the arrival of early spring. They return to the same winter-blasted shingle spit from where they were hatched. Their returning numbers soon build to upwards of 2,000 pairs on that frail shingle spit where they start to jostle, strut and raise their jet-black crests and jet-black rapier bills tipped with fiery yellow to the lowering grey sky.
By the end of April they are in full courtship fettle and then along comes a hapless ‘ranger’ and his bumbling crew, who chug along the spit in an ATV loaded with small wooden houses, each the size of a shoe box. They do this exactly at a time when the terns are at the height of their courtship, at their most febrile and sensitive, and such an outrage was met with the one obvious reaction. The terns upped and left. Ribbon development had arrived and they fled.
The point of these boxes is hard to fathom, but I was told it helps to reduce predation on the tern chicks by herring gulls; anyway it has worked because the terns scattered west to find more peaceful places and settled on some lowlying but less suitable shingle spits out on the west sands.
When the last big tide came, one of these spits was inundated and the chicks were washed off and drowned, or picked off floundering in the rip-tide by the mewling herring gulls. Those big gulls, the blackbacked and herring, rather remind me of hyenas and, like hyenas, are marvellous.
Strong and superbly able fliers in the depths of a winter storm, they slide down the face of a grey-green winter wave with hard-as-ice beady yellow eyes, always on the lookout.
Easy pickings
Sadly their numbers have exploded, again due to the ranger’s extravagances. Why would you go and pick along the foreshore looking for a desiccated shorecrab carcass when you can drift up to a pig unit and fill your boots with highprotein pignuts?
It means there are a lot of strong gulls pushing their weight around who could, with a flick of that battle-axe beak, roll over one of those stupid little wooden huts and pick the tern morsel out like one does with a Big Mac box: the fast-food snack before the main course up at the pig unit.
Willie Athill has lived on the North Norfolk coast all his life. He now farms oyster and seaweed beds.
I’ve gillied on various estates and gained a lot from my time at each. I have learned a great deal from the mistakes I made and the things I experienced, so I’d like to share some advice with any gillies just starting out.
First, read the contract. I know the excitement of starting a new job can cause you to skim through boring paperwork, but it’s important that you read the contract thoroughly, retain your own copy and question anything you don’t believe is right. Even as a seasonal worker, you have rights.
Next, don’t be bullied out of taking your pension. When I was younger, I was sat down by a laird and encouraged to opt out of the estate’s pension scheme, because
“seeing as I was only there for the season” it wouldn’t be worth doing for such a short time. You may end up working multiple seasonal jobs before you get something permanent and that can equate to a few years without paying into your pension. Don’t let a penny-pinching laird talk you into shooting yourself in the foot.
To get the most out of your time on the estate, you need to learn as much as you can. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, or to ask to be shown how to do something. Headkeepers aren’t teachers by trade — it’s a two-way street. You have to show effort and willingness before they’ll share their knowledge with you.
The more you know about your estate, the better equipped you are to answer the questions of clients, and fill any awkward silences. A big part of sporting estates is hospitality, so a store of wildlife or history anecdotes can go a long way to keeping clients engaged. Entertained clients make for happy headkeepers; this can trickle down to you through better tips or a more favourable reference.
For many young gillies, it’s their first time away from home, and for some it truly shows. Look after your boots, layer-up properly and make sure you eat breakfast. Learn how to batch cook — it will save money and time — and make sure to give yourself at least one hot meal a day, especially during the hind season – cigarettes and energy drinks are not a stable diet. Bothies are cold and hills are colder, so take a flask. Make time to leave the estate and see other people – your mental health needs maintenance as much as your physical health does.
Finally, if you work with ponies, ask your headkeeper if you can keep a shoe at the end of the season. I have a shoe from Shuggie, my first pony, and it makes me think of rum every time I look at it. I also have a shoe from another pony that makes me chuckle about how much of a little git he was every time I see it. I wish I’d kept shoes from the other ponies I’ve worked. They are physical reminders of memories made and will stay with you long after your gamekeeping career has taken off.
“Don’t be afraid to ask questions or to ask to be shown how to do something”