DARK ESTUARY
By "B.B."
Illustrated by D.J. Watkins-Pitchford
Some browning / foxing to closed page edges otherwise a clean hardback in dust-wrapper.
(1953) 2000 White Lion edition. 4to (180 x 253mm). Ppxii,164. Colour frontispiece illustration, b/w woodcut illustrations by D.J. Watkins-Pitchford. Brown boards, upper board and spine titled in gilt.
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The nicely-produced White Lion Books edition of BB's classic wildfowling book.
"So does the true fowler taste of the inward charm of his sport. It is the natural scene: the beauty of northern winter dawn, the blazing sunset sky reflected across the quiet firth at evening, the silent majesty of a night of stars with the faint, unearthly cries of wildfowl moving on their mysterious journeying, which means so much." (BB, 1953).
"When Dark Estuary appeared as a successor to Tide's Ending, it was still possible to meet no other gunner on the sea walls of Britain save perhaps a local fowler. The pressure on the wildfowl population is increasing every year. I can see the time coming when there will be no more true wildfowling around the coasts of Britain. When that day comes, perhaps this book and its companion volume Tide's Ending, will stand as some sort of memorial and a record as to what wildfowling was all about." (BB, 1979).
"I came across Dark Estuary first when I was fifteen. In it I read about BB's adventures with his gun and dogs on the salt marshes of the east coast, the remote estuaries of the highlands and about the techniques and weapons of a wild fowler. BB tells in vivid detail of the perils of wildfowling, of his experiences of being trapped in quicksand and mud, of being cut off by the tide and fearing help would never come. Reading the works of BB reinforces those solitary days, making them more valuable and treasured. In essence Dark Estuary is a shooting book, but it's much more than that. It's a deeper, richer and fuller book, one of love for the natural world, one of comradeship and friendship in wild and remote places. It also reminds us all to take solace and peace in water, woodlands and fields. These simple pleasures are what make a man, and BB knew how to capture them better than any other. Within all of BB's books is his love of nature and of the rural world. This is what he conveys so well. His descriptive passages are so evocative that you can almost smell, see and hear the countryside. It is for this reason that his works are regarded as classics and are loved by so many." (Tom O'Reilly, angling book publisher and founder of The B.B. Society).
Contents include:- Between the tides; Goose country; A wildfowler's summer; Puddy Tat Hill; Books and pictures; A Norfolk bird sanctuary; A night to remember; The mill o'Monteagle; Hey! Ho! The wind and the rain; Straight shooting; Stalking and driving; Wildfowl and weather; Watch your step; Stalking in the snow; Away from it all; Little longlegs; One morning flight; "Up the burn"; An autumn goose hunt; The lighter vein; Geese on the fields; 'Sawbath' afternoon; Dawn ambush inland; Appendix: Wildfowling terms.