Word: shelduck
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...fluty call of a curlew heralds the first light of dawn. A faraway widgeon whistles to its companions. A rid off in the dark shallows, a flock of shelduck guffaw at one another like wee-hour carousers wending their way home. MacKenzie Thorpe is in his natural habitat. He is guiding three "guns" across the desolate marshlands of Lincolnshire on England's east coast. Bowlegged and bearded, he creeps through the high grass like some hungry predator, his burly hulk seemingly impervious to the chill wind knifing off the North Sea. Climbing a creek bank, one of the hunters...
...only $360 and had "four good guns" confiscated−a small penalty, he figures, compared with the yearly bag records he keeps in a blue notebook. In 1942, his best year, he took 48 pheasant, 72 partridge, 68 hare, 1 woodcock, 106 geese, 146 mallard, 231 widgeon, 193 shelduck, 2 shoveler, 1 tufted duck, 61 plover, 18 pigeon, 79 redshank, 50 knot, 40 curlew, 1 reeve, 1 gadwall, 1 pintail, 1 black-tailed godwit, 2 whimbrel and 6 rabbit. In the early 1960s, the invasion of the marshes by wildfowling clubs convinced Thorpe that the bountiful days were forever gone...
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