DARK ESTUARY. By 'B.B.' Illustrated by D.J. Watkins-Pitchford F.R.S.A., A.R.C.A. 1980 second edition.

(1953) 1980 2nd edition. 8vo (162 x 240mm). Ppxii,164. B/w plates and illustrations by D.J. Watkins-Pitchford. Black boards, spine titled in gilt.

"So does the true fowler taste of the inward charm of his sport. It is the natural scene: the beauty of northern winter drawn, 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. It is a little-known world, the world of tideways where the sea first meets the flat lands of marsh and ooze. It is the private kingdom of the tideline birds, from the little waders which are the most graceful and dainty of all our British birds to the stately wild geese. ...If the time should ever come when there is no more true wildfowling around the coasts of Britain, 'BB' hopes that this book - and its companion Tide's Ending - will stand as some sort of memorial and a record of what wildfowling was all about."