Bigger picture of a mosaic

Focusing on habitat can ensure our countryside is a haven for snipe, lapwing, curlew and redshank

- MIKE SWAN

It’s late October and the migrants are very much on the move. While you might see an odd late swallow, most of the summer visitors are well and truly away by now, while quiet nights are full of the sounds of winter visitors.

I always look forward to the first ‘tseep’ calls of the migrating redwings high above. They either travel widely spaced or there are lots of them up there, judging by the calls right, left and centre.

This, too, is the time when the rough shooter might flush a snipe almost anywhere. I have kicked them out of a picked-over strawberry field, a clump of nettles on the top of a chalk down, a tank rut on Salisbury Plain and even a dry wheat stubble on the home shoot. With birds appearing out of context like this, you need to be quick to get a shot, but what a wonderful reward when it works.

Any day with a snipe in the bag is that bit extra special and one of my most anticipated days each season is what we call ‘shoot share’. This is a date in late December or January when I get together with a couple of friends, whose shoot is in the Avon Valley, south of Salisbury. A morning in our woods after pheasants, the odd woodcock, a pigeon or two and perhaps a redleg, is followed by an afternoon on their water meadows for snipe and teal, then an evening flight.

We rarely shoot a total bag of more than a brace-and-a-half apiece for eight Guns, but there can easily be eight or more species. What a fulfilling day it is.

Potential for snipe