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Red and brown. Those were the predominant
colours in the eyes of a small boy searching for hermit crabs in
a rock pool on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth. The dull
red of ancient geological formations interspersed with slippery
brown patches of bladder wrack. The collecting urge was strong
and the most readily secured prizes were to be found underfoot.
Shellfish, sea anemones, starfish and spiny urchins - indeed any
creature which could be carried home in a 2lb jam jar half filled
with sea water. With a searching gaze constantly directed
downwards it was not difficult to imagine that the whole world
was red and brown.
Green and blue and yellow were not then serious colours. On happy
summer days there were sandy beaches to be enjoyed, lush meadows
to be explored and clear skies under which to dream but, when the
hunting instinct prevailed, when there was juvenile work to be
done, it was back to the red and brown land where so many natural
treasures could be picked by merely upturning a few water-covered
stones.
The estuary was a major feature of those boyhood years. My
parents' house had been built, a century earlier, as the
residence for the gaffer of the salt pans and it quite literally
rose from the tideline on massive stone buttresses. At first we
gained access to the foreshore by means of a rope ladder secured
to a rusty iron hook on a downstairs window sill while a pulley
fixed to the garden wall allowed driftwood, sand and gravel to be
hauled up from the beach in abandoned fish creels. In that age of
austerity there was a multitude of uses to which the spoils of
the sea could be put.
Then the great day arrived when my father decided to build a
permanent fight of steps to replace that fraying, swaying rope
ladder. The high water mark was combed for timber to use as
shuttering, bucketful upon bucketful of coarse sand and crushed
shells was carried along the beach to be hand-mixed with cement
and the backbreaking task of creating a concrete staircase began.
In the mind of a small boy the rock pools, mussel beds and weed
banks had suddenly drawn even closer.
Not that the estuary was always welcoming. When winter storms
arrived I would lie awake at night listening fearfully to the
waves pounding upon the house walls and to the high spiteful
rattle of salt spray being whipped against my bedroom window.
There was no double glazing in those days. Even thick wooden
shutters and heavy curtains could do little to deaden the noise
of a tempest raging without.
In the morning different sounds might be heard. Should the gale
have abated a little, I would be wakened by the plaintive calling
of gulls wheeling over the shore. Driven in from the North Sea by
the foulest of weather, they would find rich pickings amongst the
limpets and periwinkles which had been torn from their rocky
havens by the storm. Bounty of another sort would also be washed
up by the succeeding tides. Fishboxes, baskets, nets and floats
of cork or glass littered the tideline and had to be assiduously
gathered in case - just in case - they might be of some future
utility.
Little did I realise that in later years I would crave to be out
on the foreshore whenever conditions turned wild and dirty; that
a different kind of harvest could be yielded by the estuary.
During the succeeding few summers the world expanded and its
horizon lifted beyond the immediate red and brown. So too did the
range of produce which could be culled from the shore. When the
tide was at full ebb, a mussel might be scooped from its shell,
tied to the end of a fathom length of twine and dangled from the
farthest rocky outcrops as bait for partans - the huge edible
crabs which could crush a carelessly placed finger between their
powerful pincers. The thrill was in the capture of those great
crustaceans and they were always released unharmed to scuttle
back to their underwater caverns. My grandmother's insistence
that partans could be cooked only by dropping them alive into a
pot of boiling water served to ensure that none were taken home
to meet such a fate.
The acquisition of a fishing line brought further quarry within
reach. At first one was satisfied with poodlies and sprats but,
before long, mackerel and flounders were sought with increasing
avidity and, at last, the hunting instinct was rewarded with food
for the table.
It was about that time that the boy became aware that birds other
than gulls frequented the estuary. In autumn, turnstones searched
the dried seaweed at high water mark for sandhoppers while, after
the tide receded to expose great flats of mud and sand, piping
trips of dunlin and knot would wheel in to feed on molluscs or
worms. With winter's approach the waders were joined by larger
fowl - sea duck riding out the waves in rafts up to ten thousand
strong and skeins of wild geese which passed high overhead at
dawn and dusk.
One day my father arrived home with an old astronomical telescope
- 48 inches of solid brass casing, lenses like saucers and a
tripod upon which the whole apparatus perched. Before long the
novelty of scanning the heavens wore off so the telescope gained
a permanent position at an upstairs window from which the
foreshore and waters of the estuary might be examined. With the
aid of those powerful optics the flocks of anonymous duck could
be identified as scaup, eider, goldeneye or scoter and the less
common arrivals of longtails, merganser, wigeon or shelduck were
noted carefully in an exercise book from which the wasted pages
of arithmetic or grammar had been carefully torn.
When the years of primary education drew to a close I had to
travel daily into the city for schooling and my attention to
birds became wider and progressively more scientific. Natural
history society field expeditions introduced the wildlife of
wood, meadow and moorland while biology lessons provided a
systematic understanding of ecology and behaviour. Throughout
that time, however, the birds of the estuary were not forgotten
and, at every opportunity, the foreshore was revisited.
*************************************************
The history of wildfowling contains many accounts of personal
transitions between fowler and naturalist. By no means is this a
one-way phenomenon and, for every accomplished ornithologist
whose interest in birds stemmed from days spent with gun and dog,
there is a wildfowler who can claim that his love of the sport
developed from a birdwatching apprenticeship. It would beg
criticism to suggest too emphatically that no naturalist can
truly understand the habits of wildfowl unless he has hunted them
on our wild coastal marshes but there can be little doubt that
few hobbyist twitchers share the awe and respect with which the
longshore gunner regards his quarry. Eyebrows are less likely to
be raised at the assertion that no wildfowler can enjoy the
fullness of his pursuit without a keen knowledge of the the
habits and habitat of the more common duck and goose species.
During my own adolescent years the hunting urge was largely
fulfilled by fishing for trout in the rivers of East Lothian
while my response to the call of the estuary lay in field
expeditions with binoculars and notebook. The lure of the
saltings cannot be readily assuaged, however, by sitting at the
roadside scanning the marsh from afar and it was not long before
flooded gutters were being crossed and muddy creeks followed in
an attempt to attain a closer encounter with the fowl. Even then
there were limits to the degree of satisfaction which could be
derived from studying birds while they roosted or preened during
the daylight hours so, gradually, just as I had forsaken the
civilised stances from which my contemporaries watched wildfowl,
I also forsook the civilised times of day during which they
ticked off their species lists. Instead of wandering down to the
shore, dressed in short-sleeved shirt and flannels on a summer's
afternoon, I might be found crawling about a frozen marsh before
dawn in midwinter. Only then could the primordial thrill of
sharing a desolate landscape with flighting pinkfooted geese be
fully experienced.
It was on such a cold December morning that fate conspired to
introduce me to the world of wildfowling. For a few days it had
been rumoured that two bean geese were associating with the
pinkfeet on the estuary and I could hardly wait for the weekend
to mount an attempt at spotting those rare birds. Only a couple
of hundred bean geese migrate regularly to Britain and those
normally spend the winter split between the Yare marshes in
Norfolk and Threave Estate north of the Solway. To spot one in
eastern Scotland would be a red letter day; a chance not to be
missed.
Had I possessed a modicum of common sense, the tactic would have
been simply to tour around the countryside, searching out the
fields where the pinks were feeding. In those surroundings two
bean geese would have stood out merely by virtue of their larger
size and I could have watched them at leisure. The follies of
youth are such, however, that I decided to stalk the birds on the
saltings before they left their roost and so, with two hours to
elapse before sunrise, an intrepid birdwatcher was crawling over
the marsh grass towards the mud at the tide's edge.
Drawn ever onwards by the murmuring of the pinkfeet, I slithered
and scrambled as the grey eastern light gradually strengthened,
fervently hoping that I could get close enough to view the birds
before they grew restless and departed the estuary in search of
their scarce winter victuals. It seemed that I had stumbled for
miles over the flat marsh. Wherever a gully gave a little cover I
could make good progress but then, as the gutter changed
direction and threatened to lead me away from the goose talk, it
was necessary to move cautiously and slowly on my belly to reach
the sanctuary of another creek. Eventually, just as the sun was
poking its head over the far horizon, I arrived at the very edge
of the saltings and, to my delight, discovered that the geese
were but a hundred yards from my position.
It was a wonderful sight. In the clear light of dawn they stood,
preening and ruffling, the refection of each bird perfectly
mirrored on the silver surface of the glistening wet mud.
Conscious that they might flight off the shore at any minute, I
anxiously fumbled for my binoculars and scanned the flock. Any
disappointment which might have been felt at not immediately
spotting the bean geese was masked by the wonder of witnessing,
at such close range, the morning ablutions of almost a thousand
pinks.
All hope of seeing the rare visitors had almost dissipated when a
group of about a dozen birds from the far side of the flock took
to the air, lazily flew in a low arc over the mud and alighted
directly in front of me. I could hardly believe my luck. The
nearest goose was clearly bigger than a pinkfoot and, through my
glasses, I could readily discern the distinctive orange and black
bill of a bean. Traversing the remainder of that group with the
binoculars, I found that it contained not two but three of the
vagrants.
For perhaps fifteen minutes I lay, enthralled by the picture and
the sound of so many geese at close quarters. Several other
little parties of pinks left the farthest edge of the flock to
resettle beside my precious bean geese and it was then that I
realised that they were leapfrogging towards me, pushed closer by
the advancing flow of the tide. Then, as if to break the pattern,
one group took to the air, circled the birds still on the mud and
headed inland. In an instant the great flock fell silent. Three
or four seconds elapsed and suddenly, with a tremendous clamour
of calling and thrashing wings, the entire company rose into the
sky and passed directly over my head.
Rolling over on to my back I watched the birds gain height before
sorting themselves out into tidy V-shaped skeins. As they spread
out over the marsh, their music subsided to the well known
"wink-wink" notes which are so characteristic of the
species.
Scrambling to my feet to gain a better view of the departing
geese, I heard two gunshots ring out over the saltings and
watched a pair of birds fall out of the lowest skein. For some
months I had been aware that, on those early morning sorties, I
shared the marsh with other human beings who had a purpose other
than simply watching the wildfowl. Sometimes I would find their
motor cars already parked at the side of the coast road when I
arrived but they always seemed to leave for home before I
returned to the sea wall. On one occasion I had seen a far figure
and his dog half a mile ahead of me but I had never made contact
with one of those wildfowlers and harboured a slight regret that
they disturbed the lonely tranquillity of the foreshore. That
morning, as I stood watching the flighting skeins, I prayed that
neither of the birds which had succumbed to the fowler's shots
would be the very bean geese which, minutes earlier, had paraded
on the mud a stone's throw from me.
Only then did I remember that the tide was fast advancing.
Already water was flowing up some of the gutters in the marsh
grass and little trips of waders flew back and forth as the sea
covered their feeding grounds. Conscious that I had a long way to
walk and that the tidal flow would be fairly rapid over the flat
marsh, I decided to delay no longer. Not that I was unduly
concerned; my outward journey had been in darkness and my route
dictated by the need to remain out of sight of the geese I was
stalking. In daylight my progress would be considerably faster.
Following the top of the creek along which I had earlier crawled,
my emotions were a peculiar combination of elation at the success
of the expedition and worry that, so soon after I had observed
them, one or two of the bean geese might have fallen to the
wildfowler's gun. Before I had travelled 400 yards, however, I
was faced by a more pressing problem. The flooded gully which I
expected to lead me back to the roadside, joined with another and
I discovered that the land upon which I stood had become an
island - an island which would very quickly be covered by the
sea.
In vain I searched for a place where the creeks might be
sufficiently narrow to jump across. Indeed, they seemed to grow
both wider and deeper by the minute. Eventually, reconciled to
the clear fact that a soaking could not be avoided, I removed my
boots, rolled up my trouser legs and gingerly stepped into the
icy water. Once committed, there was no going back but, whereas I
had hoped to be able to wade across the gully, it became
necessary to swim the final yard. Fortunately, although the air
temperature was close to freezing point, there was little wind
that morning and, having clambered up the muddy side of the
creek, I was able to avoid chilling by running the remaining
distance towards high water mark.
That was when I met George Wilson. He must have watched with some
incredulity as a wet, bedraggled figure trotted over the saltings
towards him. Emerging from a clump of straw coloured rushes, he
shouted a greeting and, gasping for breath, I slowed my pace and
turned to face the old man. Feeling that an explanation of my
condition was required, I blurted out some words about watching
geese and being cut off by the tide. The little fellow - he could
not have been much more than 5 feet tall - smiled wrily and
suggested that I go to his cottage to dry out. He then turned
back to his hiding place and re-emerged carrying a long brown
shotgun and two dead pinkfeet.
The next few hours were to be amongst the most significant in my
life. George Wilson lived in an estate cottage just across the
road from the shore, a cottage of which he had been given a life
rent in recognition of many years spent as a gamekeeper to the
local laird. Sitting by his roaring fire, wrapped in a thick
woollen blanket, I listened to his accounts of days and nights
spent close to nature. He told me about many stormy mornings in
pursuit of the wild geese and about hard times when hunger could
be kept at bay only by the wildfowl culled from the estuary or
rabbits snared in the hedgerows.
As he related his tales I began to appreciate that this gnarled
old man understood far more about the habits of wild birds and
animals than any of the guest speakers to whom I had paid avid
attention at meetings of the Natural History Society or the
Ornithologists Club. He had lived with the rotating seasons for
almost three-quarters of a century and little seemed to have
escaped his notice.
I will not say that he was impressed; but he was certainly
surprised to learn that a mere birdwatcher had risen long before
dawn and crawled to the very edge of the saltings in the hope of
spying a relatively rare species of goose. He would have
understood my behaviour much more readily had it been motivated
by the prospect of stocking the larder. But then, he assured me,
no wildfowler would have been so foolish as to get himself cut
off by the tide.
As we talked that morning I grew to respect the old fowler and, I
suspect, he must have developed a liking for me. Dusty diaries
and photographs were produced, he showed me how to clean his
ancient hammer gun and took great delight in demonstrating to me
the antiquated equipment with which he reloaded his spent
cartridge cases. Above all, he talked with real affection and
sympathy about the wild birds of the estuary and, without trying,
persuaded me that one could never really know about wildlife
until one had hunted it on terms which favoured the quarry rather
than the hunter. The gesture was at the time wasted upon my
youthful arrogance but I later appreciated just what an honour it
was when, before I departed from his cottage that day, George
Wilson invited me to accompany him on a wildfowling outing the
following weekend.
***********************************************
I could hardly wait and, as the days slowly passed, I rehearsed
over and over again the instructions which had been given.
Saturday arrived at last, bringing with it a hard frost so that
the stars twinkled brightly from a cloudless sky as I pedalled my
bicycle along the winding coast road, the saddlebag stuffed with
all of the clothing which George had specified. Arriving almost
an hour ahead of the appointed time and expecting a long cold
wait before my mentor rose from the comfort of his own bed, I was
surprised to find that a light already glowed in his parlour
window and that a hearty fire burned in his grate with a black
kettle on the boil to provide steaming mugs of hot, sweet tea.
While he busied himself collecting together gun, cartridges and
all of the other accoutrements which apparently were necessary
for a visit to the shore, I listened to the plan which he had set
for the day. Because the tide would be higher than the previous
Saturday, he reckoned that the geese would be roosting a mile to
the east and, to intercept them, we would need to follow the
river channel and find a place to hide just where the saltmarsh
changed to dunes and sandy beach. Then, after the great grey
birds had flighted, he would welcome my assistance with some
mysterious "wee job" before returning to the marsh for
a shot at the duck in the afternoon.
The sky was still inky black as we stepped out into the frosty
morning air. From the woods behind George's house an owl hooted
and, as if in reply, a far-off engine gave a double toot as it
pulled the London sleeper train along the old LNER line towards
Edinburgh.
Burdened by the weight of the old man's gun and a hessian sack of
other equipment, I was soon out of breath trying to keep up with
the tiny figure which strode purposefully along the metalled
road. Apart from a milk lorry, its load of bottles rattling
menacingly in their metal crates as it thundered past, we saw no
sign of life until we reached the village where, to my relief,
George paused for a moment to buy half a dozen breakfast rolls at
the bakery. The warm, yeasty aroma from the bakehouse served to
recharge my batteries; which was just as well for, a few paces
farther down the street my companion - a gentlemen to the last -
ordered me to lay down the gun and carry two weighty bundles of
newspapers, which lay on the pavement, into the village store.
"Mrs Simpson has a bad back," he explained. The fact
hardly surprised me if she had spent a lifetime lugging great
bales of newsprint about. Every household in the surrounding area
must have read at least three morning papers to justify the pile
which that little shop purveyed.
There was the merest tinge of grey spreading upwards in the
eastern sky as we left behind the streets and crossed a long
rickety wooden bridge which traversed the rivermouth. Climbing
down the grassy banking to the flats below, George warned me
against allowing any mud to enter the barrels of his precious
fowling piece. Such mischance, he warranted, would result in his
head being blown off should he fire the weapon while its muzzles
were blocked. It seemed to me that he could always look down the
tubes before loading any cartridges but, that morning, I was not
inclined to argue with my tutor and guide.
Feeling like a beast of burden I trudged onwards in the wake of
the wiry wee fellow until the mud changed to soft yellow sand and
I realised that we were on a beach which was familiar from
boyhood bathing parties and family picnics. As the silhouettes of
the ramshackle wooden changing huts came into view, George
suddenly made a left turn across the high water mark and kept up
his forced march for another few hundred yards. Without warning
he stopped, so that I almost blundered into him, and declared
that this was the place.
"The pinks are out there," he avowed although, strain
my ears as I might, I could not hear any of the notes which his
keen senses had discerned.
"Tip out that big bag," he instructed. Grateful that
the dead weight of the sack could at last be removed from my
shoulders, I hastily obliged and spread out on the damp sand
three smaller bags, a rusty biscuit tin and something which, at
first, I thought to be a tent. In fact, I was not far from the
mark. George took the bundle of canvas and opened it out on the
ground, explaining that it was the mainsheet from an army ridge
tent which, while serving His Majesty, he had identified as being
ideal for a morning just such as this.
Lying on our backs, with the sand-coloured fabric doubled over
our bodies, we must have been as near to invisible as it is
possible to be on a featureless shore. While we waited, the old
fellow explained the procedure to be followed. With our heads
resting on two of the smaller bags which had been contained in
the heavy sack and the canvas drawn up to our noses, we would lie
absolutely still until the geese were directly overhead. Then,
when he gave the word, I was to throw back the sheeting so that
he could spring to his feet and fire both barrels. While he
reloaded the weapon, I would sprint out to collect the two fallen
geese and, without any delay, return to lie flat in the
tent-cloth to await the next skein.
It did not quite work out like that. We lay for the better part
of an hour with the cold gradually seeping up from the damp
ground before there was any movement from the pinkfeet. When they
did flight, the birds came, not in a timed succession of small
groups, but as one huge flock which filled the dawn sky. Filled
the sky, that is, apart from the section immediately above our
encampment.
Afraid to move lest I incurred the wrath of my tent-mate, I
attempted to roll my eyes to impossible angles so that I might
watch the departing geese. The still air was saturated by their
music but the nearest birds flew past at least a hundred yards to
our side.
Although I had never heard George swear, I fully expected to be
treated to a rich vocabulary of curses on account of our bad
luck. On the contrary, after the last of the goose-talk had
subsided, he merely raised himself on one elbow and said
"That was close, laddie, verrae close."
*********************************************
The "wee job" which George had lined up for me turned
out to be quite a treat. One of his cronies, Bert Nicholson, had
been hospitalised due to a tractor accident and his collection of
penned wildfowl required to be fed and watered. Bert's house was
on the same estate as George's, the two men having been workmates
for most of their lives. Behind the house, where most folk might
have a vegetable garden, three shallow ponds had been excavated
and a strong perimeter fence of wire netting provided sanctuary
for an odd miscellany of duck and geese.
The collection had apparently been started with wingtipped birds
which local wildfowlers brought to Bert but, as his interest in
the subject had expanded, the farmhand bought in breeding pairs
of duck to augment his stock. Inside the netting were almost a
hundred birds representing most of the native species plus a
staggering variety of fancy foreign duck. My interest, however,
was on the field behind the pens where a small flock of greylag
geese grazed, accompanied by little parties of free-flying
mallard, pintail and wigeon. Those birds, George assured me, were
not part of the collection but had voluntarily accepted the free
rations which Bert supplied and remained unmolested in the field
for most of the winter. As if to prove the point, 20 or 30
greylag took to the air as he spoke and noisily circled around
the house before alighting to resume their feeding on a fresh
portion of the pasture.
After tending to the penned wildfowl, we sat by the side of the
ponds and ate our own lunch. During this time I was given a
goodly dose of homespun philosophy relating to the sport of
wildfowling and, before long, I began to appreciate why a man
who, on the face of it, had risen long before dawn on a freezing
December morning for the apparent purpose of shooting geese, was
not noticeably disappointed when the great battalions of birds
flew past just out of range. I learned about the challenge of the
pursuit and about the thrill of seeing and hearing wild fowl in
wild places. Above all, I learned that an old man who had
suffered the shelling of the Great War, whose wife and small
child had been killed by lightning while he was overseas in the
army and who had survived the depression of the 1930s, could find
peace and contentment when sharing the dark estuary with the
birds which he loved.
After listening to George's story I felt like an intruder when we
went back to the shore for the evening flight. As darkness fell
and wigeon whistled overhead I thought of all that he had told me
and wished that I could creep away and leave him to enjoy the
solitude he relished so much. In the event, I twice had to run
out and fetch the duck which fell to the boom of his 8-bore so
perhaps, by combining the duties of gun-bearer and retriever, I
earned my place by his side that day.
What I certainly did not earn was the present which he gave me
two weeks later. Having persuaded my parents that George should
be invited to share our Christmas dinner, the old fowler arrived
at our house in a taxi, dressed in his Sunday suit and bearing a
long, thin parcel neatly wrapped in brown paper. He explained
that he would never again use the gun which he had carried for so
many years on his gamekeeper's rounds and he would like to think
that, unlike himself, it could avoid permanent retirement. It was
a Birmingham 12-bore bearing the name of a North Berwick
ironmonger and, in every sense, it had been built as a keeper's
tool rather than a work of art. Despite its plain stock and
unengraved action, I was to treasure that gun for a long time. I
also grew to treasure the fact that it changed me from a
birdwatcher into a wildfowler.
This file is an
extract from "Fowler in the Wild" by Eric Begbie. It
may be reproduced, in whole or in part, by magazines or other
publications with the prior permission of the author.
