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marsh man

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Everything posted by marsh man

  1. Yea that is what the leaf look like , very similar to O S R but the leaf is a lighter Green , with all this mild weather the crop is now losing it's Winter look and looking lush along with the O S R , very early this year as it don't normally start to freshen up till early March . MM
  2. A lot of the local shoots now pay the tax before the shoot helpers are given there ( wages ) we have to sign for ours and I think the cost to involve an accountant would cost more than what we would save , think it's a case of let sleeping dogs lie
  3. Could be grown for Cattle or Sheep Winter feed like a fodder beet
  4. I have never seen a pair together , we are getting more and more about so it might be only a matter of time , not everyone's friends , but still nice to see .
  5. I can see me having very little left Paul, if any from my so called private pension , next in line will be what little we get for picking up and that will be attacked from all sides and top and bottom , once they find out we get £45 for roughly a eight hour day and use our own transport plus feeding the dog they might give us a little back
  6. Cheers , would my allowance now be more or less ?
  7. Do it make any difference with the allowance if you were married like me and have recently lost my wife, so do it now make me a single person when it come to allowance's ? THANKS MM
  8. We will always have some form of regret when both a person and an animal that you know dearly and have been part of the family , for the last 50 odd years I have never been without at least one working Labrador , if I am honest I have hung on to then for a week or two longer than I should have done when the time have come to make that horrible decision , no one like to see your best friend go but over the years I have hardened up to it and the final event don't get any easier , in fact since my working days have finished nearly 17 years ago I have spent more time with my dogs than I had throughout my working life , even last night we had our shoot meal and since I lost my wife just before Christmas my dog come out with me all the time and have never been left at home by himself , so he was happy in the back of my motor and when the meal was over I went and let him out for a few minutes run around car park , yes we all feel we could have done a bit more after the event but you come across a very responsible person and you done as much , if not more than you could be expected to have done , you might be grieving now but things will get easier and your dog had a brilliant life with no regrets . MM
  9. If they have still got them why not offer them £40 the two , the charity shops around here are always open to offers , you offer what you think they are worth , they cannot price everything right and they might be finding it hard to move them on .
  10. Not sure he is collecting himself all the eggs he had on his premises over the years , with nearly 3000 he is now charged with and 9000 from his previous two convictions it seem a lot of bird eggs for one man to collect , he might not be selling them on but is he buying from other collectors ? MM
  11. That is exactly right , my state pension isn't touched by the taxman , but my small private pension which is less than £50 a month is cut in half , half to me and the other half to the taxman . MM
  12. Coots would had been similar to a Moorhens egg , although before the 62 / 63 bad Winter we very rarely saw many as they were mainly in the Broadland area like on Hickling Broad where the old king George and Price Phillip used to have some big ( driven ) Coot shoots that would often be in four figures , when we had that bad Winter all the Broads froze over and the rafts of Coots came down to the estuary for open water , we were laid off work at the time as me and my mate were both trainee brick layers and we were in heaven rowing up the river between the ice flows and putting four barrels over a pack of Coots when they would lift up just as got into range , after picking the dead and wounded ones up my ole grand father would skin them and make a Coot stew , I can still imagine the lovely smell in his kitchen when these were steaming away on his little gas oven , mind you if we had hit some of the ice flows that were in the river at the time we would had certainly been in heaven . MM
  13. like most country side boys at the time we also collected bird eggs , ours were slightly different as we ate most of the ones we got , we had some big reed beds on the marshes that the Moorhens loved and a large spoon on the end of a bamboo cane resulted in a good many fry ups , these were the size of Bantems eggs and two or three made a good meal along with some fresh marsh Mushrooms , the ( odd ) Swans egg also found it's way into our little kitchen along with Mallard and even a few Lapwings eggs , One local book I have got stated the women used to take a wicker basket on the marshes and fill them up with Plover eggs and sell them on the local market , you imagine that happening today in our vastly different world we are living in . MM
  14. You are right he did say it was a mental illness , he had been collecting birds eggs for six decades and he is now 71 and will no doubt get another term inside when he is sentence in May .
  15. Will this chap ever learn to leave birds eggs well alone , afraid not according to todays E D P , this is the third time Daniel Lingham was caught with a hoard of wild birds eggs in his home , this time he had just under 3000 , in 2005 he was jailed for 10 weeks with having 4000 eggs in his home and in 2018 he had 5000 eggs in his house , he was recently caught on camera taking a couple of Nightjar eggs and is due to be sentenced on May 3rd
  16. I have just received my quote for house and contents combined from Avivia ( Ex Norwich Union ) and it have gone up by just over £20 which is not excessive considering last year it was under £100 , I will go on the comparison sites but if it is only a few quid then I will it on a well known insurance company .
  17. I never moan about what I get from my state pension L B , I had paid all the extra bits over the years and I more or less get the maximum you can off a state pension , my worst investment unlike yours was putting money into my private pension as it is hardly worth the paper it is wrote on , at the moment I get exactly half of my private pension which is under £50 to begin with, the rest is taken by income tax and I have now been retired over 16 years , when I was investing my savings I was putting the maximum into I S A bonds and even the pensioners bond they once brought out , all the interest was tax free and the capitol was still there when it matured and I done quite well out of it , if I had put that money into a private pension then I would have had a lot less savings than I have got now , mind you , as long as I have got enough to live then money don't mean a thing as one day you won't be here to spend it , so enjoy what you enjoy best and leave the work place for the younger generation . MM
  18. That was a nice way to draw the curtains on another season , ole dog look well pleased with himself , or herself . Overall it have not been a great season , the marshes got far to wet early in the season , this alone gave the fowl that much more choice than normal , it would be easier to say what marshes were not flooded rather than say what ones were , this was a winding down season for me and I still managed to get duck as and when I wanted one or two , my problem now is seeing duck in poor light and there is very little you can do about that as you cannot defeat getting old , unless the good lord want you before you get old and then there is no need to worry if you can see the duck or not
  19. You are entering the stage of life where your mind can do it but the body is not always in agreement , I am not lazy by any means but it is that much more enjoyable if you can drive to your set up place , or at least very near to it , lugging all your gear over sodden ground and then the thought of carrying nearly 30 Pigeons back plus all your gear is no longer as tempting as it was when the body was a bit more mobile , this is the time of the year for those looking for perms as a lot of the retirees who shoot all the year round seem to be absent when it turn cold and with the threat of rain on these dull days , and who can blame them
  20. In Kent and beyond , no shortage of places , it's more of a shortage of people to find them , you have only got to look at fellow member Mr JDog who often report on a session at a new perm , these places are not advertised , it is up to the person who need the shooting to find them , always have been and always will be , no easy way around it . MM
  21. This might have been a very mild early Spring up to now but the rains seem relentless , yesterday we were in another Yellow weather warning and several local roads were once again flooded , walking down the marsh this morning it was cloudy but no rain although some is forecasted a bit later , another sign of Spring was Mallard are now in pairs and that much tamer than they were a few weeks ago when they were keeping a eye out for anyone carrying a pair of steel tubes that could end up giving a duck some medical issues ☺️
  22. Some variation up and down the UK , normally we would get some very cold winds from the East like we did a few years ago when we got the Beast From The East in late February to the first week in March , this last month we haven't hardly had a frost at night let alone during the day , the big gardens that open it's doors for Snowdrop walks have been open a good two weeks and the Crocuses have also been out for a couple of weeks . even in my garden
  23. It also stated on a earlier program that there are now six Butterflies that stay here during the Winters months rather than seek warmer climes abroad .
  24. Just seen the weather for next week and the very mild weather continue all next week , it is already one of the mildest Februarys on record and could well end up the mildest one ever . Going for a walk this afternoon after a morning of heavy rain the Snow drops are already past there best , the Dafs are all well in bloom and the Oil Seed Rape is now greening up nicely , birds should be nesting up very soon but knowing the British weather it could still have a sting in it's tail . MM
  25. A very detailed write up as we have come to expect and we were not disappointed , I take it your dad live in a bungalow and not one of these high rise houses if he was indulging in cleaning out his gutters , I do mine and can easily reach with the aid of a pair of steps . Our part of the county was very slow on what was the third week , half the woods seemed empty today with very little shooting going on , next week is the last week and apart from it being very mild I cannot see this years roost shooting breaking any records , still , as I keep saying it's the taking part that count
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