by J.P. Bentley

The fascination of bird watching is attracting more and more enthusiasts every year. Whereas in the days of the Keartons, Pike and Coward, before the 1914 war, the field naturalist was an odd and solitary fellow, nowadays the half-tide rocks and mud flats in our estuary become more like camping sites — crowded with ‘hides’. Fortunately they are inconspicuous and their occupants quiet enough, but still much too crowded for those whose idea of cruising is intimately related to the liberation from the noise and bustle of everyday life.

The cruising man — especially the dinghy cruising man — whose interests extend beyond the gun’ls of his boat has a number of advantages over his shore-bound fellows. He can reach the really quiet places far out among the tidal banks or in little coves where no road leads.

Often enough he will find himself in such places quite inadvertently. Perhaps he overslept and missed his tide. Perhaps he chose a blind channel on the last of the flood. The hours of waiting will be full of interest for him. He need not travel far, looking for things, they will come to him. If he has a pair of binoculars so much the better, but they are not essential. But he must acquire the art of avoiding sudden movement. He must learn how to be really still.

From his point of vantage in the shelter of the cockpit, his awning, or cunningly hidden where his cabin top comes down to the coamings, real close-up views will be obtained. In the shortening days between autumn and spring marvellous flocks of winter migrants will hurtle past — a blizzard of rushing wings. Then the vast cloud will turn and settle all around him. A little research will soon enable him to identify knot, dunlin and sanderling. Each species has its appealing characteristics — the mouse-like run of the ringed plover along the water edge; the humped stance of the oyster-catcher as it faces the keen wind; the ballet dance of the pirouetting redshank. Patient observation and scouting of the excellent pocket sized handbooks now available will before long reveal lesser known species. The observer will graduate, as it were, from the herring gull to the Iceland gull, the common tern to the Arctic tern. And if he doesn’t, what does it matter? He took up cruising in preference to racing. He will not, one hopes, fretfully strain to the expert— wise. His enjoyment will increase as his knowledge extends. He will find pleasure in identifying the myriad footprints in the mud and sand. At night, if his little boat is snug and all quiet, he will hear the infinitely varying calls, twitterings close by the hull, loud honkings high above. He will emerge from his warm sleeping bag and carefully peer out — sharing the mystery of the activities of the night. How rarely is the night really black! The heron and curlew have added their larger forms to the mass of flitting shadows. Masses of duck can be heard or seen floating with the tide. Only the chill beginning to steal over him will urge him at last to tend his anchor rope, and crawl back to his now still comfier bed.