Shooting Times & Country Magazine
A CLASSIC SERIES REVISITED
Simon Garnham considers the many and diverse changes that are taking place in the skies above us, from migratory to celestial
Let me take you to a favourite place: a narrow oak plank that spans a creek on the River Stour estuary. Four times a day — twice incoming, twice outgoing — the tide scours the chestnut posts on which it is nailed. A wildfowlers’ summer working party secured it here 30 years ago. It marks for me the point at which arable land becomes the wilds of the marshes.
This is likely to be the footbridge’s last season. The inexorable action of the murky brine has rotted the posts and rusted the nails. But this morning it served me well enough. As a base on which to perch while preparing a brace of early-season mallard, it is both a chopping board and a seat from which to watch feathers drift out on the current. A thick mist shrouded the whole coast as I dressed the first ducks of the season. Down clung damply to my fingers. Pinions and flight feathers drifted off to sea.
As I plucked, far away in Balmoral, the late Queen’s gamekeepers were preparing to begin Her Majesty’s last journey. What a tribute it is to the shooting community that gillies were chosen for the incomparable honour of service as coffin bearers. Who better to be entrusted with such a privilege?
I imagined, above Her Majesty’s hearse on its journey to Edinburgh, geese were returning to our shores with the September full moon. I’ve heard the first brents here in East Anglia, drawn back to the eel grass in the Thames estuary. House martins have been departing in their thousands, joining the ranks of terns and of warblers on their long, seasonal migration.
A first for me has been the sight of a wryneck — a mottled brown woodpecker that ordinarily would be in Scandinavia. Drift migrants of this sort, such as bluethroats and obscure warblers, are an interesting challenge for a wildfowler’s identification skills. A pair of punt-gunners told me of their pleasure in correctly identifying an exhausted phalarope, which settled next to their punt on a winter outing. They were as pleased with this ornithological oddity as they might have been with a chance to pull the lanyard of the big gun.
The peak movement of curlew and whimbrels is complete and their calls are ringing across the estuary at night. Juvenile little stints and curlew sandpipers have joined them in places on their latitudinal journeys, moving east to west and stopping on their way to sub-saharan climes. I’ve recently become something of a migration geek, following the work of the Motus
Wildlife Tracking System and Graham Appleton’s Wadertales blog, which show the movements of all manner of birds. Both are worth 10 minutes of exploration, if you have the time.
Of all the birds now gathering, probably the most remarkable for its endurance is the bar-tailed godwit, capable of flying from eastern Australia to Siberia within a week. It was godwits that saved this estuary from a prison being built on its banks. As a Site of Special Scientific Interest, the River Stour was deemed inappropriate for such development after a long public inquiry. That, and the cost of repairing Strangeways prison after the riots of 1990, were enough to dissuade governmental planners. The site is now a nature reserve where turtle doves nested this summer.
With ducks plucked, tonight will be my first chance to stand by the pond with gun in hand. Gentle easterly air streams suggest there’s every reason to expect teal arriving under the harvest moon. The moon’s companions Jupiter and Neptune will be visible as it rises. Autumn has arrived with its promise. Wildfowlers will be delighted.
“What a tribute that the late Queen’s gillies were chosen as coffin bearers”
Simon Garnham left the Royal Marines after 10 eventful years. He now combines managing the family’s small farm in Essex with teaching English, as well as wildfowling and running a highly informal shoot.