Left up the creek

An Essex saltmarsh splash look like a great spot for a last-gasp outing on teal but they prefer one to the other, as Simon Garnham discovers

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Wrong place again, dog,” I muttered, as a third group of teal arrowed past out of range, inky black against the greying dawn, before settling into a creek some 100 yards from us. Tess was unmoved. Some you win, some you lose, her look seemed to say. But I was less phlegmatic; marsh time in February is at a premium and I didn’t want to miss any opportunities.

My little piece of Essex saltmarsh has two main flightlines and today we’d chosen the wrong one. Tess and I were hunkered down near a splash that I’d been feeding right out on the ness — much used by birds hugging the water’s edge. But this morning, the teal had chosen flightline B, which is over the creek that cuts a deep scar into the middle of the saltings. It leaves an island of alkali grass, sea aster and sea purslane at high tide where Tess and I had taken cover — too far to cover the creek.

Three groups had lifted from inland flightponds and sought sanctuary only a rugby pitch's distance away, offering no shot despite my whistles and scattering of decoys. To move or stick it out?

As so often happens on the morning of an adventure, I’d slept badly. At midnight I’d let the dogs out under a moon so bright the world was cast in negative and the cockerel crowed, fooled into heralding a false dawn. The sounds of the estuary were carried in stillness over the ploughed field that divides my house from the water’s edge. Wigeon, greylag, teal and mallard were all audible as well, as were the lonely cries of curlew on the breeze.

Wigeon