Spirits in the snow

Arctic weather brought with it the duck and other fowl, but too much of it and the smaller birds and waders starved to death, recalls Alan Savory

- Alan Savory

In the days of my early wildfowling forays, I used to long for really cold weather with ice and snow and bitter winds. I know better now. Really Arctic weather drives the fowl right out of the country. What we want is mixed weather to keep the fowl moving. If the really cold weather goes on too long the fowl leave, and the wading birds start to die from starvation.

Three hard frosts are enough to get the duck off the inland marshes on to the shore and the pools in the saltings at flight time. Then the duck come tearing in and the whole romance of wildfowling comes into its own. There are duck in places where there have been no duck the whole winter. The snow on the uplands comes down to the saltings’ edge and the wings of the mallard reflect the snow and seem like spirit birds out of the north.

The wigeon come in great whistling hordes, and the estuaries are full of brent geese. If it goes on too long the birds start to lose condition and thrushes and redwings start to die; the glamour of the wild weather has gone and you begin to long for rain and a thawing wind.

Windmills

It started for me as long ago as the year 1927 on the Acle marshes; that green and grey misty marsh that reaches from Great Yarmouth on each side of the three Broadlands rivers, the Yare, the Bure and the Waveney, for miles and miles and miles. In those days it was drained by windmills and always liable to flood if there was not enough wind to turn the mills. There were hordes of wildfowl that year, and miles of flood water.