North Norfolk

[Sundodger]

I am up in North Norfolk on my hol's, the amount of foreshore marshes up here is very impressive, I was wondering where all the Pinks Roost, in the winter months or do they all end up in the Wash.

And how many clubs use these marshes.

Thank you

Sundodger

[anser2]

Things are very much on the change in North Norfolk when it comes to pinks. The reduction of the sugar beet crop and changes in the manner of harvesting it are having a major impact. My clubs marsh used to hold 40-60,000 pinks in winter peaking around 90,000 , but today it’s a good flight if 10,000 are using it as a roost and for long periods the pinks are absent. One roost suffered from over shooting , but that was never the case on my marsh as there is no shooting close to the roost and the geese were never over shot , indeed it frequently possible to flight for several days on end and be the only gun on the marsh. Some of the geese have moved onto the inland fresh marshes to roost , but many have changed their feeding areas to other parts of Norfolk.

 

A couple of friends and I rent 500 acres of fresh marsh which floods in winter. 30 years we never saw a pink there , now we have anything up to 10,000 roosting on the flashes some years ( 7,000 ) last winter for 6 weeks. The geese have also taken to roosting on quite small flashes too. Last season I was flighting teal over a flash barely 20 yards across when 100 pinks came in to sleep the night there. 20 years ago they would have never done that.

 

Until recently once harvested the beet tops were left on the fields for weeks and sometimes months before being ploughed in. This gave the geese a steady prolonged feed. Today the beet tops are usually ploughed in within days and sometimes on the same day as they are harvested. The food supply has diminished and so have the geese along the coast.

 

The final straw for many of then North Norfolk geese has been an increase in inland shooting feeding grounds with some excessive bags. As long as a goose has a safe roost and a safe feed he will put up with a lot of flack on his flightlines . But they have to have somewhere to come from and to go to or they will wander looking for somewhere more peaceful.

 

Its true I sometimes flight the pinks inland , but my friends and I have a strict rule bag two or even if you do not get a shot leave their feeding grounds by 9.am to let the birds have a feed all day. Plus we limit the number of flights we have each season- the result is we keep geese all season on our ground and I love to sit in the car a few hundred yards away from where we had been flighting and watch the geese pouring in while we have breakfast. Yet not so far away we see fowlers spending all day on their fields and then they wonder why they see so few geese on their ground.

 

I have wandered away from your question “ where to the geese roost “. The answer is when they are on the coast , Almost anywhere where there is a large enough area of sand or mud where they feel safe.

[Sundodger]

Hi Anser

Thanks for the reply, with such a big area for the pinks to choose from I suppose they can roost anywhere that suits them.

[marsh man]

Sundodger....... hope your enjoying your holiday on the North Norfolk coast , you have certainly picked a good week .

 

If you get a chance call in at the N W T at Cley and have a nice cup of tea and look over some of the best wild fowl marshes along that part of the coast , you wont be disappointed.