Raise a glass to the Brewery

A Suffolk shoot boasts record numbers of amber-listed bird species and bucks several national trends.

- Richard Negus

The rustle, crack and crackle of beaters’ flags cut sharply through the crystal air. Frost, the first one of the year, clung to the heads of teasels, dusting them with light. The Guns were lined out to my right, on a wide grass headland.

Then, from the block of biscuitcoloured maize sprung a smoke pall of avian mass. First came the blackbirds, ‘chang, chang chang; their voices were disgruntled rather than fearful at their disturbance. In their wake sprang yellowhammers — bee-like swarms of them, 50 or more. Finches — gold, green and chaff — advanced in waves; innumerable dunnocks too.

Blue tits were less fearful but still in rolling profusion, swinging left to land en masse and bedecked a hawthorn hedge; their chattering ‘mee, mee, mee’ ringing out.

Speeding coveys

Only once their more diminutive colleagues had completed their manoeuvres did the game birds appear. Climbing upwards into the blue, striving to clear the tops of towering broadleaved trees, burst speeding coveys of Frenchmen, all gaudy red and white bars. Brassy glints of cock pheasants and dun hens. All were met by staccato gunfire. The sheer avian majesty, diversity and splendour left me agape. It was quite an extraordinary sight on quite an extraordinary shoot.

Graham Denny is a paragon. The son and grandson of dyed-in-thewool farming conservationists, as an agriculturalist he is intentionally untidy. As a keeper he is professional, almost fastidiously so. And as a naturalist, he is lauded — universally.

His home, Brewery Farm, lies in the heart of Suffolk and carries a healthy head of French partridges, wild greys and fine pheasants. The farm is also home to a phenomenal number of other birds. You will hear this last said of many shoots. Graham’s claim, however, is not mere hearsay nor guesswork.