Dawn of the season at dusk

Wildfowler and conservationist Richard Negus explains the reasons behind his alternative plans for the opening day of season this year

- Richard Negus

I have an app on my mobile phone that lets me time travel. It is a chronos-like gadget that delights, if apps can delight, in reminding me that the sands of time run with unseemly haste.

It saves the photographs I have taken. Then, like a conjurer, it digs them out to reveal what I was up to on this day — be it last year, two years ago, three years ago or even over half a decade ago. Images recorded on 1 September are more plentiful than any other day of the year. Endless photos of me covered in mud, my dog covered in mud, my friends covered in mud and, of course, the birds that inhabit the dramatic far-flung wetlands of East Anglia. The opening day of the wildfowling season has become a date of utmost importance, etched upon my psyche.

Seven years of photographs curated in some mysterious digital cloud reveal my total absorption with the sport. Every image bears witness to my fascination for the ways of wildfowl, marsh and foreshore. They hint at my love of the liptingling tang of sea salt, the oozy, unctuous cologne of mud and the whisper of wings.

However, before I descend into self-indulgent Peter Scott-like lyricism, I should clarify something. This 1 September, I decided to forego crouching in a foul gutter on the foreshore. Next year, my app will record that I spent the evening flight of the opening day of season some 25 miles from the coast, ensconced under a fruit-laden hawthorn hedge.

My choice of location was based on no little reconnaissance. I have recently returned from a fortnight’s family holiday in Northumberland. From our cottage on the saltings’ edge, I was afforded a grandstand view of the avian comings and goings on the Aln Estuary.

Backward juveniles