Airgun Fieldcraft: A Lifetime's Hunting Advice by Ian Barnett & Nigel Allen

Author:Ian Barnett & Nigel Allen [Barnett, Ian & Allen, Nigel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sports & Outdoors, Hunting & Fishing, Hunting, Shooting, Outdoors & Nature
Amazon: B00J5MJ8XO
Publisher: Blaze Publishing
Published: 2014-03-20T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10: THE ROOK

THE ROOK ROOST

I had lived in Norfolk for 13 years, but had never taken the time to visit the legendary Buckenham rook roost. I’d read articles about it on websites. So, on the last working day of the year for me (and an early escape from work), I called in on the way home. I was eager to see this spectacle (from a hunter’s perspective).

I trundled the Jeep down the narrow lanes, praying that the threatened afternoon rain would hold off. I drove through to Beighton, swimming upstream against the empty sugar beet trucks returning from the Cantley sugar processing factory. I followed a sign to Buckenham, and then finally hit the sign for the station. Station? Well, trains do apparently stop at the tiny platform now and again!

I donned my boots and wrapped well against the chill easterly wind cutting across the marshes. Buckenham Fen harbours an RSPB reserve, set in the levels surrounding the River Yare as it snakes its way from Norwich to Great Yarmouth and the sea. Even on this cold afternoon, the car park was busy; this was definitely twitcher country. In fact, I felt a little inferior without a spotting scope and tripod! Not part of that particular club, I grabbed my camera and headed over the railway crossing, toward the reserve. It was early yet, but I wanted to get my bearings.

The marshes are dotted with alder carrs – fens overgrown with trees – to right and left. In fact, there were already rooks coasting into the carrs, fussing and fretting. Some were landing to feed in the soft loamy soil of the water meadows. Standing close to the station, with an hour to go to sunset, I was a little confused. The birds were drifting in from all points of the compass. Where was the main roost? Was I in the right place?

I stopped a passing scope-wielder and asked him. He looked me up and down as if I was goneout (the local expression for mad). “Rooks? They’re everywhere!” he replied. Not very helpful – he’d obviously crossed ‘rook’ off his twitcher’s-list years ago and wasn’t prepared to revisit it. Then I watched a party of four serious birders approach. Dressed in green from top to toe, they were carrying so much spotting equipment and camera gear I wondered if Simon King was in their midst.

“Rooks?” That same daft look answered me. Then his colleague said: “Apparently there’s a sizeable corvid roost here?”

“Yes!” I offered, excitedly. “Like twenty-thousand plus birds!”

They sniggered to each other. “Sorry, we’re not local.” And off they marched. I figured they’d probably been watching humped-back cranes or ruffle-bottomed ducks, or some other exotic waterfowl.

“What’s wrong with rooks?” I thought. These are the folk who spend so much time looking for the unusual that they fail to see the ordinary. The sort of people who say that magpies don’t predate songbirds, more than likely.

I hijacked another dejected looking birder, heading back to his car. He’d obviously missed the baggy-arsed bittern.

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