Robin Scott
Robin Scott looks forward to the start of the wildfowling season and ponders the wisdom of Natural England
Little ever got in the way of morning flight to start a new wildfowling season. But the first of September ain’t what it used to be. Least ways, not around here it isn’t.
Since moving north from the vastness of the Fenland ‘duck factory’ I’m sorry to say I have hauled myself out of bed just twice to mark the big day in the past 11 years.
I blame the weather
Maybe things are still different on those wonderful east coast saltings where a cooling sea breeze keeps biting flies at bay. But an endless succession of uncomfortably warm starts on this little inland patch of mine has beaten me into submission.
Cleggs ate me alive last time out and I only bagged a scrawny young mallard so full of pen feathers it proved impossible to pluck. I’m surprised it could even fly.
Climate change
What’s more there are now more duck with late broods about the place than used to be the case. Climate change?
Some experts might say these young ducklings (like the pheasant chicks I’m now finding in September) have little chance of survival, so bagging mother by mistake is no big deal. But the thought doesn’t sit easy with me.
It’s for this reason the guns stay locked in the cabinet until the first migrants – usually wigeon – pitch up on the flight pond midway into October. Plenty of feed, a few days rest, and they’re ready to go… into the freezer.
Hard on their paddles come Icelandic-speaking mallard and Greylag geese. How do I know? They gabble and honk the same as home-bred birds, and they taste the same… but leg rings prove their citizenship.
I wish I could also pin down the birthplace of those delicious teal that put in an all too brief appearance before moving quickly on south, and west. I swear their piping call has something of a Latvian or Lithuanian ring to it, but who can say? Maybe one day I will shoot a ringed bird. Only then will the mystery be settled.
The ring thing
If you haven’t done it yet, bagging a ringed duck or goose is always a notable moment because until the number on that band has been checked against the records you never know where the bird might’ve hailed from, how old it is or how far it has migrated. Some cover prodigious distances. And others don’t.
One bitterly cold January night I shot a ringed mallard under the moon on Whittlesey Low Wash. It was the first ring I’d come across so naturally I was excited and curious to find out where it came from. Maybe Scandinavia or deepest Russia?
A week or so later a letter arrived in the post from the British Trust for Ornithology with the bird’s history. Russia or Reykjavik? No such luck. The drake was only seven months old and ringed by the BTO a meagre half a mile from where it met its end. Even though it was a bit of a disappointment to discover that this stay at home duck had so few miles on the clock, it didn’t die in vain.
Biting flies or not, this year I am going to make the effort and get out for a flight on the first again. Coronavirus has made me realise
moments like this shouldn’t be wasted.
I would like to think the flight pond here would yield an ‘opening’ duck or two but things haven’t gone too well with the resident mallard and tufted. Dabchick, waterhen and coot have struggled as well.
Murderous herons and herring gulls have devoured just about everything that moves – including lapwing chicks brought to the water’s edge by their parents during the spring drought. Herons stabbed viciously at the wheeling adults as they tried to defend young. And away from the pond, over the meadows, gulls devoured those eggs and curlew chicks the crows had missed. Where gulls and non-existent licences to control them are concerned, Natural England should hang its head in shame.
Black ferret?
To compound the problem, my sister and a neighbour then reported getting brief glimpses of what looked like a “big black ferret” near a small stream that for part of its length runs close to the pond. Mink?
I found fish scales on the bank of the pond and, worse, heads and other remains of mallard alongside a drainage culvert. Even though I couldn’t find any sign of mink prints in the stream’s soft mud edges I baited a large cage trap anyway and placed it by the drain.
Next morning – bingo! The spring had sprung. But when I pulled the hessian sack away, instead of a shiny black mink inside, I found next door’s well-fed tabby pet cat staring at me. I managed to release it without getting scratched, and off it shot.
To avoid the same thing happening again I ordered purpose-made mink traps from Perdix Wildlife Supplies, and beautifully made they are too. However, two weeks later I still hadn’t caught a mink, let alone seen one. But then…
While setting a trap at the original crime scene I heard a splash just upstream in the undergrowth and moments later came face to face with the culprit: a big dog otter. Even though he was just feet away he didn’t wind me for several minutes. How I wished I had the mobile phone with me – video footage of it rootling through the silt and stones at my feet would’ve been priceless.
What was it finding to feed on? I haven’t the foggiest idea. What a missed opportunity!
The traps are still baited and checked every day just in case a mink might happen along but I really do think we’ve identified the guilty party.
And just like the protected herons and gulls around here there’s nothing I can do to stop his murderous marauding.
If only those two birds featured on his very extensive menu. Maybe then some ducklings and precious wading birds might actually stand a chance of making it into the air.
Enjoy the start!
“I heard a splash just upstream in the undergrowth and moments later came face-to-face with the culprit”