October .. Last Orders

Of all the months in the British hunting year, October has to be my favourite by a country mile. With the turn of colour on the leaves Mother Nature sweeps her soft paintbrush across forest and wood to create one last glorious, rustic canvas before drawing in her lungs and exhaling .. to blow them all away with her gales, like a child blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. The last of the harvest is underway and the mechanical monsters that can suck up a barley or maize field overnight are fed and watered, retiring to the barns for the winter. Their little cousins are out there now and the furrow is turning. The air at morn or dusk is full of rook, jackdaw and gull .. the ploughs disciples .. either going to communion or returning from it. Around wood, meadow, bank and hedgerow Autumns other crops are ripening .. some gifted with nourishment, others with poison and peril. Of the former, even the lush blackberry that looks tempting to the tongue is now fermenting or harbouring maggots. Best left to the birds. The flush of berries .. holly, sloe, mistletoe, yew, rowan .. will once again bring conjecture among us amateur weather forecasters. Does bounty mean fearful weather or fair? In my experience, it depends who's eating it and how much they're 'caching' .. but for now, that will remain my secret, thank-you!

 

 

Poison and peril? Well, the Fall's other crop bursts forth now in all its various guises. This is fungi time .. when the spores become polypores. The brackets, the toadstools, the mushrooms, the puffballs .. in so many shapes and sizes. Living organisms of great beauty or ugly fascination, so often passed by. Next time you see a display of fungus .. in any form .. stop and study it for a moment. Consider the miracle of nature that allowed its design and its purpose. If I consider any of my outdoor time 'inept' it is in not being able to remember the names of all but the most common of these wonderful organisms. A cardinal sin and one I hope to repair before I get too much older. For among these fungi is a rich source of foragers food which I have never had the confidence to harvest. And true wild harvest it is.

       

The game shooter is abroad, grinning from ear to ear and trying to keep the over-eager cocker at heel. A lucky sort will have already enjoyed a month at the Frenchmen or our own Grey partridges .. yet would have been cleaning the barrels with vigour on the last day of September ready for the high birds and the drawn cover. Ready for the captains lecture, the peg-draw, the shooting lunch, the sloe gin, the brace for the larder .. and hopefully the beaters tip. The sharper shooters will have a design on that prized right and left (or a pin-tail for the cap) from that rocket of a bird .. the woodcock. I step near these avian ninjas so often on my permissions and admire any gun that could achieve a pair, such is their speed. Out near the water-margins those hardy fowl-gunners are now crouching in dawns first glimmer with ears cocked to the breeze listening for the whistling and piping and honking of incoming opportunity. Skeins of Pinkfoot and Greylag pepper the horizon of my beloved Broadland and fill the morning sky with pattern and sound. The harder the weather, the greater the prize. Fair meat, hard won. True, true hunting .. where terrain, time, tide and elements give the quarry more than fair law.

 

Around me in the forest, the stalkers are trying to tidy up on the roebucks before the winter purdah prevails and they turn their attention to the does. The creeping muntjac will, of course, remain fair game all year and keep the freezer topped up. So as the high pheasant flies overhead and I follow it in mockery of the shotgun shooter with my barrel, giving lead and whispering 'bang' .. don't think I'm unhappy. When the teal whistle down the twilight dyke and I pretend, with my airgun, that I am punt-gunning with a four-bore .. trust me, they fell stone dead. When I'm hunkered at the woods edge, after a magpie chasing crane flies on the pasture, and a roebuck steps into the clearing just twenty yards away? I may, just may .. place my crosshair on it's heart with my safety catch engaged and imagine 'boom!'. Yet, consider this. I could do all this. Nothing impedes me. I simply choose not to .. for now.

Not for me, though, any of the above. As dawns swirling mists dampen the floor I will be patrolling the wood and field margin with my humble little popgun and enjoying my sport largely unseen and unheard. No slapping of hands or crossing of palms. No 'seasons'. I will perhaps lay a net along the woods edge near the stubbles and float out a decoy or two .. for I love a wood-pigeon breast or two in my Sunday hotpot. I will be trimming out those little nest-pirates, the grey squirrels, with a vengeance this year for they have robbed me blind. Yes .. blind I may have well been for not ever seeing a red squirrel in the flesh. I have always had a solid purpose for culling greys, in pursuit of songbird protection. Now, however, having seen those little red pixies dancing on the boughs in Cumbria I am massively jealous and hold the loss of the red squirrel to Norfolk directly accountable to the grey. Who knows, I might even eat grey squirrel for the first time this Fall? If I like the taste, then it's definitely in trouble around here. The rats will be heading back from hedgerow to farm now and will need my attention. The airgun, with a red-filtered lamp on top, is the perfect antidote to a rodent attack on a grain store .. and good sport too. And the rabbits. Always the rabbits. Recovering now from last years dearth and little myxomatosis about. As the foliage retreats, dawn and dusk move closer together, so the opportunities to fill the freezer increase.

 

 

I love October. This is the month when Mother Nature shouts 'Last orders!' and we all rush to her well-stocked bar.   

copyright Ian Barnett Oct 2013

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The Hypocrites In The Temple

I'm going to apologise up front for the abandonment of photographs in this particular piece. It would be inappropriate to include photos, as you will understand as you read this. A piece of writing which many will label a 'rant'. Some might call it 'sour grapes'. Whatever.

As a poor, inadequate but burgeoning photographer I tend to buy photographic magazines. Mainly to educate and inspire, so they are 'how to' type publications .. not the arty paper bound galleries that applaud the undoubted talents of our top 'protogs'. So I get mightily pissed off when I spend good money and find myself reading what I would term 'wildlife propaganda' in these magazines.  A case in hand is typical of what I mean. A leading magazine displayed a series of photos by Staffan Widstrand, director of Wild Wonders of Europe. Personally, I thought most of the photos were poor .. but what do I know? I see better images on Facebook every day. What really rankled, however, was this guys audacity in stating that he wanted to extend his conservation organisation to start a Wild Wonders of China group. The aim is to promote 'mass communication about natural heritage' or, if you're cynical like me .. to give him and his cronies another open-access wilderness to photograph? Give me a break! Better still, he states that he wants to get 1.5 billion Chinese to look at wildlife as not just something you put on a plate. A noble statement but one that is so indicative of the arrogance of so many high profile wildlife photographers. Nature is a rich, diverse wonderland steeped in drama, conflict and self-regulation. We are part of that, and so are our nutrional needs. Wolves and big cats don't have the franchise on hunting for meat.

Why do our top protogs and documenteers keep attempting to influence or fiddle with the outcome?
So .. here's a very personal plea to anyone waving a 600mm lens at a threatened species in the near future. Just take the pics, please, guys? And concentrate on the photos. Nature should decide whether it survives or not.

To photograph wildlife and attempt to take the 'wild' away from the 'life' is total hypocrisy.

copyright Ian Barnett Sept 2013

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A Little Known Norfolk Gem

Many wildlife watchers pay a visit to Strumpshaw Fen while in Norfolk. This large RSPB reserve lies alongside the River Yare between Norwich and Great Yarmouth. I paid a return visit this week and, as always, had the usual dialogue with the volunteer manning the entrance.  "Why don't you join?" she asked innocently. "Because I don't agree with the RSPB's political stance" I replied. She looked puzzled .. a mere foot soldier unaware of the foibles and faults of the RSPB's executives. I was about to say "I won't join until you stop blaming gamekeepers for raptor deaths and recognise the need for predator control to protect birds". My wife dragged me away before I started my lecture and we enjoyed a few hours rambling about, photographing insect and birdlife.
 

 A wonderful reserve for those who enjoy close access to nature .. but this article is about another reserve, nearby. One of the most magical places in Norfolk. And it isn't run by the RSPB.
The Ted Ellis Wheatfen nature reserve is on the opposite side of the River Yare to Strumpshaw, near a village called Surlingham. It is managed by the Ted Ellis Trust. Wheatfen Broad and its surrounding 130 acre reserve is the legacy of Ted Ellis, a wildlife writer and broadcaster who lived in a cottage on the reserve for forty years until his death in 1986. This is a much more intimate reserve than Strumpshaw. A maze of narrow, moist paths weaving amongst deep dykes and through acres of sedge and fen. Each corner you turn brings a new surprise. On a warm summers day like today, the air is brimming with insect life.

 

The paths are rich with wildflowers such as orange balsam, hemp agrimony, yellow iris, ragged robin and meadowsweet. These attract an array of butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies. The latter two alighting on the posts and rails of the many bridges carrying the visitor over the dykes and lokes.

Birdlife is rich if you pick the right time of day. Heron, kingfisher, cormorant, reed bunting, reed warbler, cettis warbler, sedge warbler. King of the sky .. and abundant in this area .. is the marsh harrier. In July, the swallowtail butterfly (one of Britains rarities) is prolific here. As well as the fen, the walks here take you through some typical alder carr, in Surlingham Wood .. a carr being, basically, a wood with its roots largely under water!

 

 

If you pay a visit to Wheatfen, I would recommend good walking boots. The ground is lush, peaty and soft. Take a pair of binoculars and definitely take a camera. Sit for a while on one of the many benches and just listen to the sound of pure tranquility. If you're very lucky (as happened to us on a previous visit) a family of weasels may pass by. As we left today, the warden David Nobbs told us that an osprey paid a passing visit last week for a few days. That, I would love to have seen. No wonder this one of David Bellamys favourite spots! And not an RSPB badge in sight.

 



Copyright Ian Barnett Sept 2013

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Eden Concluded

Getting lost on Loughrigg Fell for the second time in my life has probably earned me the deserved reputation of the worlds worst map reader. Actually, that's probably not fair. I didn't have a map. I had one of those little pocket size cards ( you know.. "20 mother-in-law friendly walks in the Lakes" ) which proved to be a tad inaccurate. I was starting to get suspicious when we passed Lily Tarn for the third time. The first time, the in-laws commented that they felt they'd been here before but I brushed it off, saying that all these tarns look the same. The third time though, I was rumbled. After half an hour of trying to find the path down and failing, I passed the card to my wife. Ten minutes later we were sitting in Rothay Park eating ice creams. Back at the cottage my little red friend obliged again and I was amazed at its disregard for humans and dogs, bouncing around in the hazel tree and hopping across branches unperturbed even by the lads in the Mountain Rescue team who came to practise climbing on Jackdaw Scar. Charlie the Cocker didn't take kindly to Cumbrias finest coming too close to his newly claimed territory but I feared the womenfolk suddenly had a hankering to get seriously lost somewhere? I locked all the walking maps away in case they hatched a plot. That night, when the lads had left and the jakes returned to their roost, I sat calling owls again and drew in three male tawny's with my squeaker, imitating the females distinct "kee-wick".

A request for a rest day allowed a visit to Lowther Castle to see first-hand the restoration work going on there. Derrick escaped with a day to himself on the river and left me wishing I enjoyed angling! We walked the whole 130 acres, saw the red squirrel hides put up by the P&DRSG (see last blog) and glimpsed one red disappearing into the wood. 

Highlight for me (never a fan of old buildings) was turning off the escarpment trail and walking right under a buzzard in the wood, which floated over our heads and sat on a nearby branch watching us. This prompted a visit up the road to the Lakeland Bird Of Prey Centre where we enjoyed (I kid you not) a two and a half hour talk and flying display. It was superb. Informative, amusing and .. as always with raptors .. captivating. We watched a Peregrine Falcon, two Gyr Falcons and a Harris Hawk flown. Excellent.

I got my revenge for Loughrigg at Grizedale Forest by picking the White Trail and telling everyone there were no hills. We stopped at Hawkshead for the obligatory window shopping and I was pleased to see this quaint little village still retains some of its charm .. unlike Windemere, which holds no appeal to me.

Grizedale, not for the first time, disappointed in its lack of wildlife or birdsong. A lush forest but too silent .. much like Norfolks Brecks. It redeemed itself a tad with the autumn fungal displays and Grizedale Tarns mirror surface but the wildest creatures we saw were the chaffinches scavenging around the visitor centre. Returning to the cottage I was pleased to find a note tucked under the in-laws windscreen wipers from Sarah McNeil and Jerry Moss saying that they'd called by while on patrol in the area. Sorry we missed you, guys, but thanks for trying!

The final day was a relative washout so we went into Penrith, where John Norris finally broke the padlock on my wallet and I walked out with a Wychwood Packlite backpack .. designed for the angler but perfect for the wilderness photographer. The wife and I wrapped up the week with a long afternoon walk local to Well Tree Cottage, in the pouring rain, returning with two very soggy but very content dogs. When we left this morning the river was in full flow after yesterdays downpours, which left Derrick distraught. He knew that the best days fishing would be tomorrow, in the deep and clouded pools. 

A wonderful week in a stunning part of the country and a lesson learned in terms of photography. for I deliberately lightened the load by leaving my smaller Nikon 80-400 zoom behind. Big mistake. The red squirrel pics I took with a Sigma 50-500 zoom, handheld. I dumped dozens of unusable pics due to blur (it's a very heavy lens). As you read this, I'm back in Norwich with a second week off, on my own stamping ground. The gun ban has been lifted and I certainly won't need any maps. Unlike Loughrigg, I know this patch like the back my hand! Gotta go .. I have about 500 photos to sort through!

Copyright Ian Barnett Sept 2013

 

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The Garden Of Eden

When the family decided that a change of holiday venue was in order and we'd book a cottage in Cumbria instead of the South West, I must confess to touch of disappointment. My health hasn't been great over the past two years so there was little chance of me climbing from Wast Water to Scafell Pike via Mickeldore as we had ten years earlier. If it nearly killed me then, Lingmell Gill would be certain of a victim if I tried it now! The gentler Tors of Dartmoor and Devons rolling wooded hills are test enough for me now. But here we were, freshly arrived at a remote cottage in a small gulley below Kings Meaburn. We were in the Valley of Eden, close to Penrith. As soon as we disembarked to explore our new home for the week, I knew that I was going to enjoy this. Well Tree Cottage was possibly the best equipped cottage we have ever rented for a holiday. All mod-cons, a walled garden to dissuade renegade cockers and lurchers from escaping across the Cumbrian countryside and within an hour we had discovered Well Tree's most superb asset. It had no wi-fi and no phone signal! We were cut off! Initial panic about losing all my Facebook friends and Google plussers receded when I realised that it also meant no-one from work could contact me .. unless by carrier pigeon. Superb!

Well Tree lies next to a ford over the River Lyvennet so having unpacked, we all set off to explore the fly-fishing beats which came free with the temporary tenancy. Personally, I find fishing as about exciting as  watching the National Lottery draw. There seems a lot of investment for little return. So while the father-in-law pointed out eddies and pools and trout lay-ups, I was looking for otter sign, heronries etc. My role for the week would be chief photographer and scribe, which everyone knew should keep me out of trouble. She Who Must Be Obeyed had already implemented the obligatory 'arms embargo' so was now worrying how an air-gun ban and a Facebook drought might effect my mental health. Back at  the cottage, after our first evenings supper, I sat out on the cottages paved patio, turned off the lights, listened to a tawny owl and studied the most three dimensional sky I have been privileged to witness in many years. With absolutely no light pollution, I could see the edge of the universe from here (helped, undoubtedly by some generous portions of a particularly tasty complimentary Cabernet left by the cottages owners).That night I lay in bed with the windows open and drifted off to sleep in the blackest place on Earth, soothed by the lullaby of the river bubbling over the rocks below the ford. Heaven .. though it could be hell for an incontinent!

Now one thing I was hell bent on achieving while in Cumbria was to photograph wild red squirrels for the first time. By 'wild', I don't mean vicious red squirrels .. I mean reds that haven't been spoon fed peanuts by tourists. I guessed that it may be a challenge. No sooner had we cleared up after the bacon butties next morning when I noticed what looked like a tiny fox clambering among the leaves on the beech overlooking the patio. As I got busy with the Nikon, there was much debate about 'was it red or was it grey'? It was actually me who was playing the cynic here, having shot hundreds and hundreds of greys back in Norfolk. Grey squirrel youngsters are often streaked with rufus fur. This little beauty was as red as Reynard so while I was sure it was a red squirrel, the ears had totally thrown me? I had been expecting those 'elf-like' ears, longer and more pointed than a greys. Perhaps the ears develop with age? I needed to find out but, needless to say, I was thrilled to get some cracking pics on the first morning of a red feeding on ripening cob nuts. 

A little later we were driving to Penrith when Derrick (my Father-in law) and I spotted an interesting looking roadkill at the side of a lane. "Was that what I think it was?" I asked. "Mink, I think!" he answered. "Or was it a black squirrel?" We were still debating it two miles along and decided to double back and take a look. The women-folk sat in the car looking embarrassed as I took pics of the expired mammal on my iPhone while fellow tourists overtook us. I was relieved that it was a mink. I don't think I could have handled the excitement of my first red and my first black in one day! Having survived an expedition around John Norris without opening my wallet, I sat later baiting mice with peanuts on the patio and stealing their souls with my DSLR. Busy little chaps, mice! I'm like a child again when I get a new habitat to explore so spent my idle moments lifting stones and poking around in crevices in the gardens stone walls looking for bugs and beasties.

The cottage sits under a rocky bluff known as Jackdaw Scar, whose naming became apparent when the large colony of jakes nesting on its ledges busied back and forth. The random 'chakking' of the residents added some character to an otherwise noiseless valley. I was mildly amused one morning when I decided to explore the wood on the far bank before anyone else had risen. Next to the gate was the sign below, put up by the Penrith & District Red Squirrel Group. Jerry (and his partner Sarah) are Facebook Friends of mine. So even without wi-fi, there was a link! Over the rest of the week I saw a number of similar signs as well as many road signs asking drivers to take care and watch out for our native 'sciurus vulgaris'.

Despite the resident wildlife, I was struck by the dearth of rabbits around us and also the lack of buzzards. I used to thrill at watching buzzards soar in the valleys up here while in Norfolk they were few and far between. Now the tables seem to have turned. Is it because East Anglia harbours so many rabbits? Perhaps. By far the most conspicuous in its absence was the grey squirrel. I didn't see one during the whole week. A credit, surely, to the work of the Red Squirrel Rangers.

Of course, our trip isn't entirely about me watching wildlife. We're walking too and if this trip is proving to me that the fountain of youth is now reducing to a trickle, it has definitely proved hard for Dylan .. our ten year old lurcher. The old boy is creaking like an old door after jaunts up Cunswick Scar and Loughrigg Fell. The Lakeland paths are rarely dog-friendly and where years ago he leapt the walls or scrambled over the ladder stiles, we now find ourselves lifting him over. Yet, as is the way of hounds, he won't let himself be left behind.

So .. if you are reading this today it is because I've surfaced somewhere among the great unwashed to  release my blog into that vast ocean that is the Internet before sinking again back into the Garden of Eden for a few final days of peace and quiet. The 2lb trout which I have named the Brown Pimpernel hangs in the swim below the footbridge, refusing every fly in the box and driving Derrick insane. My camera shutter clicks relentlessly, recording titmouse and house-mouse and red and nuthatch. Charlie the Cocker lives in the eternal hope that we'll leave the gate open. Dylan just lies in the shade with one eye open, hoping never to see a hill again and dreaming of his Norfolk. Soon, Old Boy. Very soon.

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Copyright Ian Barnett September 2013

Spidered !

The clatter and crash of wheels and cogs turning ceased as soon as I saw the open view across the morning stubbles. There was nothing wrong with the X-Trail. The noise was in my head, the turmoil of yet another poor nights sleep. Before I'd left, the digital weather station in the kitchen told me that (at just 6.30am) it was 17C and the humidity was a staggering 90%. A legacy of last nights rainfall .. and the reason for my insomnia. Stepping out now onto the cropped barley fields, the moisture hung as a spectral, golden mist. The ghost of dawn battling against the ascending orb of the sun. There would be only one winner in this skirmish today and, looking at my panting lurcher, I knew we needed to take our patrol at a gentle pace. This is a glorious time of day to be out with a gun, or a rod, or a dog. The cusp between night and day sees a flurry of activity as the wild creatures change shift. Old Charlie stole back to his den, padding alongside the hedgerow, to do whatever foxes do during the heat of a summers day. The barn owl made her last sweep around the meadow margins at the same time as the sparrow-hawk lifted off to start his hunting, one birds suppertime vole being the others breakfast. Brimstones danced around the purple loosestrife already, the butterfly worlds earliest risers using that huge proboscis to drink from the deep flowers. Far out on the stubble the rooks were feeding on and around the huge, cylindrical bales. The harvest mites are plentiful but the birds have to work for their meal .. chasing the little chiggers here and there. Over near the pine coverts, a doe is browsing with her faun following closely. She has an air of ambiguity around her, even though she has sensed my presence. Perhaps she knows my feeble little rifle poses no threat? Or perhaps she knows it's nowhere near November 1st yet?

So we set off, my hound and I, to cross the shorn field and stalk the sixteen acre wood for grey squirrels. It should be simple, shouldn't it? To cross a stubble field? Not for Mr Barnett, who stops to examine everything of interest. The tortoiseshell butterfly caterpillars munching on weeds. Their striped and hairy bodies warn the passing jay or rook that their flavour could be perilous. The badgers prints in the loamy soil, showing where Brock has hoovered up those huge black slugs and done the farmer a service last night. The mysterious jelly fungus on the fallen branch beneath the lone maple that stands in the field. It needs photographing, to enable identification, so out comes the camera. The lurcher glances at me with that air of frustration. We're meant to be hunting, boss!  Eventually we reach the wood and the dog slips in along the track and lies on his belly on cool, damp grass. I understand his relief. I'm already melting but rather than undo another button on my shirt, I do an extra one up. We're now in tick territory and in this weather they will be abundant, clinging to the ferns and briar leaves, waiting for a mammalian host. We move quietly through the forest, helped by a sumptuous damp layer of leaf mulch drenched by last nights deluge. There are only the windfall twigs to avoid and the dog cracks one before I do. My chance to return the icy stare and he glances back over his shoulder with a doleful apology. Back to the work in hand and the lurcher finds the enemy first, his radar dish ears zoning in on the scrabble of tiny paws. His nose points to a trunk some thirty yards off and I see the flick of a bottle brush tail snake around the slender bole until just its tip remains. Then even that withdraws. That 'look' again, from the hound. I had obviously been neglectful in my duty. When the grey appears on a branch, squatting, my rifle is slung back over my shoulder and I'm wiping sweat from my spectacles with a lens cloth. The panting lurcher is looking at me as though I'm 'gone out'. I feel like handing him the rifle and saying "Go on! You feckin' shoot it!" We move on. As we near the end of the path, about to emerge into the fields again, the dog stops .. bristling. I stop and scan the woods edge, then spot it. It's laid up, neck craned, watching me. I reach for the camera but that simple movement puts the young red stag to flight. A handsome sapling and one I'm sure I'll meet again. Dylan crawls under the bottom rail of the steel gate and I drop my rifle, safety catch on, against the gatepost. The game-bag is lowered gently to the other side and I clamber quietly over. As I recover the the rifle and shoulder the bag I note that the dog is transfixed on something, right paw dangling in a mark. I kneel alongside him, away from the gate now, and there is a rabbit just twenty yards away .. frozen. It's seen the dog and now, me. I raise the gun, sight up through the scope and all I see is a fugue, a blur. I pull my eye away to check the lens (which is clear) but that's enough movement to make the coney bolt. Dylan starts to lunge but I call him off quickly. "Nooo!" I'm still puzzled and, checking the safety is on, turn the gun around to look at the front lens of the scope. I nearly drop the gun. Sitting, legs akimbo across the 40mm lens, is a nursery web spider, which must have dropped into the lens as I crossed the gate. I flicked the little beastie out with a straw husk and sat back against the gate for a while. The lurcher came to lie alongside me in the shade. Jeez .. that rabbit was blessed. Saved by a spider, of all things.  But that's how Mother Nature rolls, doesn't she? I didn't shoot a damn thing this morning, but it didn't matter. Why? Because I will remember, to my dying day, the rabbit that was saved by a spider.

 

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Over Population .. A View From The Inside

Driving to work early this morning I witnessed a sight I have never seen before, despite my decade and a half working and living in the Norfolk Broads. In the distance the flock of large birds beat across the horizon from right to left and I assumed it was skein of geese. My road took me straight towards them and as I approached the bridge over the narrows at Filby Broad, they passed right over me just thirty feet above the X-Trail. I tried to count them, staggered by the number. It was a flock of cormorants, at least eighty strong, heading north towards the large open Broads of Hickling and Barton, no doubt. While used to seeing six to a dozen in the air together .. or gathered on bare lightning-struck trees along the rivers, I have never seen this amount at one time. I understand that a gathering of cormorants is called a colony or flight. Though I would venture another name. A trawl of cormorants. For the collective threat to the fish stocks on Norfolks waterways of this number of birds is considerable, though I doubt catastrophic. 

 

The problem for Phalacrocorax Carbo, a problem which it will never know or understand, is that (like the badger) its continued success as a species also nurtures a growing campaign of antipathy from the genus which can both protect it .. or subdue it. The view from homo sapiens, as always, is subjective. If you love wildlife that hunts efficiently, you'll love cormorants. It doesn't mean though, that you wouldn't control them if asked to. Let me qualify 'subjective'. If those eighty birds I saw this morning landed around the perimeter of Hickling Broad and spread themselves out to fish economically, no-one would give a hoot. Yet if just a quarter of that 'trawl' landed around a shallow, half-acre private fishery where fee paying anglers have struggled to sustain a sporting stock .. there will be calls for culls. Understandably. For this bird can dive to 10 metres and eat 2lb of fish stock a day. Now, let's take 'subjective' a little further? If you are the avian equivalent of a mink (and while soaring across the waterways of Norfolk) you see the choice between sitting on a dead branch, waiting for a passing perch .. or splashing down in an enclosed lake brimming with trout .. what would you do? From my perspective, the bird is just doing what it has evolved to do and equally the angler has just as much right to intervene as the gamekeeper does to stop the fox stealing his poults. Or the arable farmer requesting a cull on wood pigeons. It shouldn't need special licensing. The law should be simple. If the bird has chosen to feed from privately stocked water, it should forfeit its protection.

From cormorants to badgers, where a similar situation exists. The current  media attention surrounding potential badger culling due to the spread of bovine TB is mainly vested in the public perception that Brock the Badger is the ursine, father-like figure portrayed in those old fifties style books and cartoons. Like the cormorant mentioned earlier, which used to be slaughtered indiscriminately by our fore-fathers, modern wildlife legislation has drawn a cloak of protection around the badger which will only ever end in disaster. Before I make my case, let me state something clearly. I love to see badgers, as I love to see all British wildlife. Four years ago I was invited to undertake grey squirrel control with my air rifles on a wonderful 1000 acre old-money estate close to my home in Norfolk. Much of my Wildanglia blog is reported from there and the wildlife I have been able to photograph there has been pure privilege. In that first autumn, exploring the estate, I counted four badger setts. One was the largest I (personally) had ever seen. Last weekend, on a deliberate survey of the estate undertaken due to the amount of badger droppings I've encountered recently, I recorded fifteen distinctively different colonies. That largest sett has doubled in size. There are even small setts under the Hall, in the garden escarpment. The estate farms two cattle herds, yet there isn't a move among the estate staff to remove the incumbent badgers. So why are the badgers annoying me?  Because they are trashing the surrounding landscape with their delving and foraging. 

The estate rides are littered with badger scat .. unusual for a creature that tidies up after itself like a domestic cat (digging a scoop). Hare and rabbit runs have become wide paths. The low under-carriage of meles meles swiftly erodes the vegetation. Their paw prints are abundant around the muddy pools. Most of all though, it is their bullish hooliganism that I resent. The total disregard for habitat. They push over the pheasant feeders, uproot spring bulbs and bulldoze the newly planted saplings to get at the roots and sprigs. Old Brock (and his progeny) can vacuum a partridge nest in seconds. They will dig out a rabbit stop in minutes, devouring the kits .. though perhaps that's a bonus? They are clean animals, for sure. Someone asked me, only today, if I can scent badgers. I can't .. unlike the rank musk of fox which I can smell a hundred yards off. The badger is so meticulous in its domestic housekeeping that I have often recovered the bones and skulls of its dead dragged from the sett along with the old nesting materials. My concern on this estate is for the Old Hall itself. The tunnelling around here lends me to believe that I will motor up the drive one day to find that the whole structure has sunk into the surrounding escarpment. 

Like those cormorants, common sense says that there should be recourse, within the law, to balance an over-population of any species if the intention is honest. After all .. that's what Mother Nature does to us.

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Simply, Hunting

Those who know me well will testify that in recent months I've taken some significant steps to 'simplify' what was becoming a ridiculously complex lifestyle. I needed to eradicate much of the pressure which contributed to my decline in health over the past year or so. I've downsized my job, reduced some extra-curricular activities and given up smoking. I've also made a point of avoiding commitments or 'obligations' to undertake anything I really don't want to do. On the shooting front, I withdrew from my FAC hunting project because I wasn't enjoying the outcomes. I've taken a further step, though. I've stripped back my hunting to a very basic level and, boy .. am I enjoying it again!
 

Purists would probably expect that if I was looking to make hunting simple again, I must have reverted to hunting with one of my old spring guns? Yet I confess I haven't gone that basic. My delight with my new PCP carbine (the BSA Ultra SE) is documented elsewhere but let me explain why I choose a PCP as my shooting tool rather than a springer. I do still own and shoot spring rifles to get my eye back in and to discipline myself when I get the shooters 'yips'. If my breathing is faltering, my trigger finger faltering or I find myself neglecting to 'follow-through', I use sessions with a springer as 'therapy'. But I can't remember the last time I hunted with one? Two, maybe three years back? Sure, springers have traits that imply 'simplicity'. No external air source needed, low maintenance and a relatively cheap purchase price. Compared to a PCP though, they are primitive hunting tools. I'm currently using one of the cheapest (and by that I mean least costly, no reflection on quality) PCPs on the market. There are several makes now available at around £400 (therefore close to the price of a top-end springer). The advantages this little carbine gives over a springer are numerous for the hunter. No recoil (less exposure to inaccuracy), less noise (no spring 'crack'), no scope creep (caused by the recoil of a spring gun). It has a multi-shot magazine so I can re-load quickly and innocuously (little movement needed, often a giveaway when hunting). A featherweight rifle that I can tote around in one hand yet with an onboard air cylinder that can give me 50 shots from a full charge .. ample for a walkabout hunting session.

'Simplicity' in my hunting means even more to me, though, than choice of rifle. Simple means leaving at home the usual accumulation of gadgets and contraptions such as hides, nets and decoys that I've gathered over the years. Simple means halving the size of the game-bag  I carry and taking out all the comfort-toys and gizmos like range-finders, spinners or binoculars. Just a sparsely filled bag with some rubber eggs, a bird call, secateurs, spare pellets and a knife. Simple. Forget the wet-gear or insect repellent. Get wet or get bitten. Simple. Add a water bottle if it's hot, a flask of soup if it's cold. Simple also means going back to my early days as an airgun 'scribe', leaving behind the DSLR camera and lenses. I'm hunting, not making a BBC wildlife documentary. Now I'm just packing a top-end 14MP compact camera.. which is a massive improvement on the little 3MP camera which got me started in writing.

'Simple' means going out into the field and wood when it suits me, when I want to, with no particular commission in mind, no fixed agenda. No deadline. No target quarry species. Just mooching along the hedgerow or stalking up the margin. Just as I did as a young boy with a catapult. Simple means speculation and adventure, not knowing what will show around the next corner. It means sitting for a while in the shade, watching the wild world pass by. Listening to the thump of the rabbits paw, the chuckle of the approaching magpie, the sonorous song of the wood-pigeon, the harsh 'chack' of the jackdaw. Simple is squatting on a tree-stump with half an eye along the nettle strangled margin, waiting for the flutter of a stinger-top that betrays the emerging coney. Simple is looking down the heat-shimmering mirage of the field margin as the days warmth evaporates from the earth, as the rabbits slope out to browse around the yellow-tipped ragwort and purple loosestrife. Simple is pulling that little carbine to my shoulder, dis-engaging the safety catch, sighting up my target through my basic Hawke Map 6 reticule, breathing out gently and slipping the trigger. Simple is not worrying how many you shot, nor how many more you need to shoot. Simple is knowing you'll miss some .. yet you'll shoot more in future because you did. Failure is natures most accomplished teacher. Simple is not worrying if what you're doing is enough to satisfy thousands of readers. It's knowing that you're there, doing what you're doing because you, yourself, want to. If you're enjoying it, it will work through in your writing and your readers will enjoy it too.
 

 I went hunting this morning. With a simple little rifle. Shot a couple of rabbits and three grey squirrels. So, so simply.

 Copyright Ian Barnett 2013

The full version of this article, with photos, can be read in Airgun Shooter, published by Blaze Publishing Ltd.

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Jerusalem

 I rarely leave my beloved Norfolk. I say 'my' yet I'm not a native. I've have simply migrated over time back to the rich agricultural county where my mother was born. It was fated, I know. Ironically my mother lives in Cardiff, my fathers birthplace .. and where I was born. This weekend I paid a flying visit to Wales to see my kin and, rather than travel along the fast and barren arteries of our national motorway system, I deliberately chose to cruise the three hundred miles via the twisting, roller-coaster roads that link our market towns and cities. A journey that, as always, refreshed my pride in this green and pleasant land. The exit from the Norfolk hinterland was blighted with the temporary gouge across the landscape caused by the dualling work on the A11, the double-edged sword that will bring money and enterprise to the East but also destroy its pastoral privacy I fear.

The patchwork quilt that is rural England unfolded before us. The vast swathes of yellow oilseed rape and huge expanses of potato blossom. Oceans of malting barley and wheat ebbed and flowed in the summer breeze as we travelled through West Suffolk and the Cambridgeshire fens. The route through the South Midlands is easy now but here we found the most obvious landmarks of a Britain given over to mass consumerism and convenience. Even the huge hangars at Cardington that house the blimps which hover our football stadia were dwarved by the gargantuan distribution centres that line the route through Bedford and Milton Keynes. Vast unsightly angled structures adorned in laudable attempts to make them blend into the horizon. Blue sky thinking or thinking out of the box? Try again, guys. 

Between Bedford and Milton Keynes the capped landfills have yet to completely return to the wild but those methane-belching pipes will eventually slip below the cover of foliage.

Through 'roundabout-land' (or should Milton Keynes be called 'Tellytubby Land'?) and into red kite country beyond Buckingham. We had lost count by now of the roadkill badgers, muntjacs and roe deer splattered along the highways since leaving home. We, ourselves, had almost wiped out a scavenging buzzard that lingered too long at the foetid meat on the tarmac but it swept to safety just in time. Tis' no wonder the red kite thrives around the Midland arterial highways and motorways. Fresh meat aplenty for a raptor that rarely kills for itself.

And talking of buzzards? Not rare now in the East but still enough to draw a breath when seen, out here in the West we watched them now soaring above nearly every valley and tree-topped hill. And all along the way kestrels hovered and rooks laboured and jackdaws jinked around a thousand church spires.

Out along the A40 and through Oxfordshire to Gloucestershire snaking through a verdant, lush landscape that brings to mind Blake and Parry and 'Jerusalem'. My fathers favourite hymn and the one that bade him farewell as his curtains closed. A detour through the slendour that is Cheltenham to remind us that architecture once was 'grand'. 

Down the West bank of the Severn, we took lunch at Newham, looking over the shallow river. Below us, on the mudflats, clear prints. Otter sign. We turned back up into the hills, through the Forest of Dean to drop down under The Kymin and over the bridge into Monmouth. Some twenty years since I walked, with friends, from Chepstow to Hay along the Offas Dyke Way and lurched wearily down that huge hill that is The Kymin to our first nights rest. Today, just as back then, a fly fisher stood waist deep in the Wye casting his line.

Down through Llantrissent to Newport. A town which I remember as a boy being the epitome of those 'dark, satanic mills' in the hymn. A steel town, chimneys belching filth and pollution and the mouth of the Usk running with poison. Now, as I crept into Cardiff by the back door (lest someone spot me) I was pleasantly surprised at the suburban countenance. It was just a short visit and soon I was brought my chariot of fire. It was a relief, though, to see that all was well in Englands pleasant pastures. So too, in what I saw of Wales!

On Bird And Animal Behaviour

I’m watching the cock blackbird, who is watching the droves of gulls and rooks returning home to rest. What is he thinking? The low, fast flight of a bird over his head makes him draw in his neck. Sparrowhawk ..! No .. he relaxes, for it is a late returning woodpigeon flashing across the garden. The blackbird is watching me too, though he is familiar with my presence here on my garden deck. He's enjoying his territory and I’m enjoying mine. He can’t possibly know that I strive to protect him and his like. He will only ever know me as a threat .. for I am human. I enjoy his presence and he tolerates my intrusion. His country cousins would not allow such close proximity. They would spot me and go rocketing through the wood with a “chee, chee, chee, chee, chee”. A continuous racket which they reserve for the presence of man. They will act entirely differently if a fox, cat or stoat is threatening their domain. Their alarm call will be much more subtle. They will circumnavigate the threat, issuing a familiar, monotone "pip-pip-pip". This is a trend that gamekeepers of old used to their benefit, the first call to know when there was a poacher in the wood and the second to know that a predator was around which might threaten the poults. That tendency to fuss around a ground based, animal threat allowing the keeper to track the culprit and stop it in it’s tracks.

The jay is one of nature's most observant sentries. Yet, she will behave in a fashion almost opposite to the blackbird. She will hover, darting under cover from bough to bough around human presence, though she will remain distant. If there is a natural threat (fox, cat, mustelid, grey squirrel) she will be much closer to them (still circling, still screaming). Catch a jay in the open though and they will arrow off, screeching, to announce your presence to every creature within two hundred yards. Worse still, your quarry will heed this warning. Whilst the browsing rabbit will usually ignore the clatter of a wood pigeon (perhaps because they do it all the time) they will flatten to the ground or bolt to cover when the jay sounds her alarm. Another canny watchman is the carrion crow. Over the years, I have tried to interpret the various calls of the crow and have mostly failed miserably. I am still convinced, though, that the treble-syllable call they emit when I’m spotted with a rifle (a “graw,graw,graw”) really does mean “gun, gun, gun!”.

I am in no doubt that many wild creatures can detect malice. We humans certainly don’t have the patent on interpretation of body-language and I have been able to check this theory many times. The grey squirrel will sit on it’s bough watching you for an eternity until you raise your scope in it’s direction. Then it will flee. Recently, I stepped from cover to see a hare staring back at me. My rifle was slung over my shoulder. I backed into cover and drew the camera from my bag. I stepped out and this normally wary beast allowed me to photograph it at leisure. I stepped back into cover and exchanged camera for air rifle. Not that I intended to shoot a hare with an air rifle, it was simply because I wanted to move on. As soon as I emerged with the un-slung rifle, the hare bolted.

Similarly, sitting on the garden deck with my wife, we watched a magpie perched on the roof of our neighbours house. I knew that although it had most of it’s attention on our neighbours bird-table, it had half an eye on us. We were moving about, preparing a barbeque. It still perched there, not feeling at all threatened. After a while I whispered to my wife "Watch this!”. I turned to the bird and slowly raised my empty arms in a mock shooting stance. The magpie squawked away in alarm immediately. Perhaps it’s the profile of a gun (or a man’s arms) which, when horizontal, registers an alarm signal in the wild psyche?

Habitual intelligence is another trend that fascinates me as a hunter. The ability of bird and beast to memorise incident and consequence. The way they can associate activity with outcome. Sometimes, it works to their advantage. Often it can be their downfall. An example of this is the baiting of corvids. Regular baiting (shoot rabbit, paunch rabbit, leave paunch in the same spot) will get results. The crows or magpies will associate the spot with food and re-visit regularly. Once the routine is established, you can hide up and be certain of a shot or two. Shoot the spot too often, however and they will steer clear. That little memory chip in that tiny brain will now associate the location with danger. Incident and consequence.

Perhaps more impressive (or sinister) are the foxes that follow me when I’m lamping rabbits at night. Not only do they know that they are guaranteed rabbit paunches before I leave (activity and outcome), but they also seem to be sure that my air rifle is not a weapon which would threaten them. In fact, so intelligent (or reckless) was one vixen that often followed me, she ran down my beam from behind me one night to try and snatch a rabbit I had cowering in the light. She damn near got a pellet in the rear-end but I managed to pull the shot in time. She missed, for the rabbit bolted, then stood in my beam looking forlornly at the empty spot where the rabbit had squatted. I held the beam on her and she trotted back up the light, eyes like tiny moons, to position herself behind me again. Her demeanour spoke volumes .. “Lets try that again, can we?” .. though I’ve never seen the like since.

At the start of this piece, I mentioned the clamour of rooks which pass over my house before dusk. A wonderful spectacle. I can sit and watch the hordes pass over at leisure, their internal navigation fixed on some far flung evening roost. As soon as I raise a camera lens in their direction, they break formation and wheel away in dismay, avoiding my attention and clearly disturbed by it. A thousand rooks and one little dot in a garden far below, yet they know I’m looking. How do they do that?

 

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The Source Of The Rile

So the seemingly relentless easterlies have finally turned and the warmer kiss of the westerly breeze this weekend chased Jack Frost from my Norfolk hinterland .. hopefully not to return now until theres a 'v' in the month. This mornings walk out with the air rifle and lurcher saw me with two layers less, no gloves and a coating of DEET .. the shooters 'eau de cologne'. The westerlies, when they arrived, brought moderate rain on their front. They usually do. The combination of warm air and precipitation tickled the time-clock of a million hidden larvae. It always does. And so, as the hound and I tracked out through the forest toward the Source of the Rile, it was a through swarms of gnats and midges.

Not that I was complaining too much. That overnight rain had undone the harsh work of those persistent easterly winds, which had left the leaf mulch on the woodland floor so arid of late, stalking was akin to dancing in a vat of potato crisps. Today, I had the luxury of a damp, deep natural carpet. All I had to do was avoid the twigs. But why the need for such stealth? Because we're hunting, my 'dawg' and me. We're searching for the Source of the Rile. A vital mission, to be taken with all seriousness, lest we lose our precious hunting land. The phone call had come mid-week from the irate land-owner. "There are far too many grey squirrels about, Ian". I didn't argue .. there are feckin' thousands of them in Norfolk! "They are decimating my bird feeders. What are you going to do about it". It wasn't a question. It was an order. "Best I come over and shoot a few, sir?" I suggested. "Best you do, young man! I am extremely riled!" I was going to mention that I don't actually get paid to do this, by him, but thought better of it. His is a pleasant little estate and provides great sport for an air-gunner. I am aware, too, how many other air-gun shooters would love this permission.

So here we were. I knew, as we stole into the wood, the position of every drey in the copse at the end of this gentleman's garden. There were far fewer live ones than he imagined. I settled the dog into a 'lay' position next to me beneath. We watched the tree canopy, both of us. Not hard, as the leaves have yet to bud. Dylan would be my radar, my eyes and ears, for he can sense a grey squirrel at 100 yards at the mere twitch of its bottle-brush tail. He is infallible, a legend, written about in two books and a myriad magazine articles. Not! As we both stared tree-ward, a grey squirrel scampered from behind the tree ten feet to out right, froze in the open as it sensed us, considered it's future carefully and sprinted back. As I fumbled to raise the rifle, the lurcher dis-obeyed every rule in the "How To Keep My Master Happy" book and went after it. The critter went up the trunk, the lurcher went behind the trunk and I went ballistic. "Get your bl**dy *rse back here!" I screamed. Which obviously agitated the squirrel more than him and it set off across the boughs. 1-0 to the grey squirrel population and a legendary lurchers career lay in tatters. He trotted back and settled down again on the floor at least two 'kicks' away from my position. Wisdom comes with sore experience.

Still relying on him to indicate 'incoming' I kept half an eye on his demeanour. When he sat up, looking across the woodland floor with his head tilted and ears flapping, I came alert. He kept looking back at me, quizzically. I followed his gaze and I, too, was confused. Nothing! Then I noticed what he was seeing. Small flicks and jumps amongst the leaf mulch. First I saw a couple then, as my eyes focussed on that level, I became aware that were dozens of movements. Then, dozens and dozens! I looked around and we were in the midst of a sea of migrating common toads. They were moving from the gentlemans garden ponds down to the stream and large pond at the edge of the copse. Some were coupled, mating, others were solo. Amazing.

We moved away, so as not to disturb them. Further up the wood, Dylan tuned into Channel Grey eventually and we took out a few of the squirrels exiting the bird feeders next to the manor house. Caught in the act, so to speak. As I sat under an ancient yew tree, trimming the tails from the greys, I sensed I was being watched. Glancing up, my stare was returned by the face of a little owl scowling down at me from not six feet above my head! I slowly reached for my ever present camera but when I looked up again, she was gone.

I took the tails and hung them in a plastic bag on the gentleman's garage door. He would use these when tying flies for his fishing hooks. Now he could, in all likelihood, complain that I'd only shot two? And I could retort that they were the two actually raiding his feeders today. If he phones though, I would be more likely to say that I only chose to leave him the two for his fly-tying. I needed the other ten for my own purposes. (Wink, wink!)

 

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