Boxing Day

Boxing Day, a traditional day for getting out and about in the countryside, working off some of those Christmas Day excesses. It is the one day of the year when most forms of the hunting fraternity are guaranteed to be out and about on the same day, whether it be the fox hunts, game shoots, ferreting, or wildfowling. This morning I arrived at the reserve just as a dark, starlit sky was beginning to brighten in the east with a promise of blue skies and a spectacular sunrise. Below is the view across the marsh to the sea wall in the east at 7.15.

Gradually the light increased to reveal clear blue skies and this one, anvil shaped cloud on the eastern horizon.

 Finally, at 8.15, the sun here was seconds away from rising above the horizon.

Alongside the reserve on Boxing Day morning it is only the wildfowlers that I usually see although even their numbers, like the wildfowl they pursue, have gradually dwindled. Ten or more years ago it wouldn't be unusual to see as many as twenty wildfowlers strung out along the saltings near the sea wall, shooting many dozens of geese and ducks. Nowadays their numbers have mirrored the wildfowl numbers and dropped to three and fours and sometimes even none.
And so it was this morning, in the increasingly cold wind and dawn light, I could see three wildfowlers hunkered down in the muddy gullies in front of me, two close together and a third several hundred yards further on. There were no shots fired while I was there but the lone guy packed up as I walked along the sea wall in his direction and he carried a dead Greylag Goose as he came alongside. We walked along the sea wall together, chatting about the shooting that morning before I'd arrived, or more to the point, the lack of it. It transpired that between the three of them out there in the dark just two shots had been fired and one of them by him had killed the goose that he was carrying. Presumably a nice organic meal, tasting far better than anything shop bought.
I left him to carry on home and re-traced by steps back along the sea wall to have a brief chat with the other two wildfowlers now coming towards me. It was their first visit to that particular site and as now becoming the norm, their first words to me were "where are all the birds", to which I replied "there's no bloody water to attract them". It was good to chat to them - about our dogs, shooting in general, doubtful wildfowl breeding prospects for another potential dry Spring coming up - and then I left them and headed off to wander through the middle of the reserve.
So, almost twelve months since last New Years Eve, I'm having the same conversations as then - where's the water, where's the birds, it's looking quite sad.