THE FASTEST GAMEBIRDS IN BRITAIN?

THIS IS OPTIMISED FOR MOBILE IN PORTRAIT OR DESKTOP

It’s only when you drive down a country road and you have a pigeon fly parallel with your moving vehicle do you come to appreciate its true cruising speed and it's not, as published, 35mph. When last I glanced at my speedometer in this situation it read 48mph yet the bird looked effortless. Even allowing for the fact that car manufacturers err on the side of caution with calibration speedometers, that is still nearly a 30% margin of error between the pigeon's accepted speed and my own observation. There’s a reason people race them.

 CONTEXT FOR BETTER SHOOTING

The tendency we have to ask 'what is the fastest?’ (in this case ‘bird we pursue’) is one that children all over the world have in fiercely contested games of top trumps and these days, online Pokemon raids (if you are unfamiliar with the second reference count yourself lucky). It is a natural enquiry we as humans make to try to place our quarry in context and therefore become better shots. While some may dismiss it as frivolous pub chat you should understand that the speed of a bird is one of the key pieces of information we need for an accurate shot along with line and, in some specific circumstances, angle of flight. When we shoot we acquire this information from the relationship of the muzzle of our gun with the bird. We match the speed and accelerate past the bird to shoot. It is the only consistent source of accurate, relevant information. If you doubt that next time you sit on a train ask yourself why objects in the distance out of the train window appear to be moving slower than objects in the foreground despite them not moving and your speed being constant.

 When you resort to googling the answer (as I did) rather than trying to work it out, you will understand why shooting wildfowl on the forshore with few landmarks for reference is difficult if you don’t have the discipline to establish a relationship between your muzzle and the bird. The same can be true for high, driven game in valleys with no trees. Competitive clay shots used to wooded backgrounds often come unstuck for the same reason when competing in unfamiliar prairie-style landscapes.

THE KING OF GAME BIRDS

The red grouse is often cited as the fastest of all game birds but when we look closely we discover that it very much depends on the circumstances. On one guide I found to the speeds of all UK winged quarry, the red grouse is quoted at over 60mph. At similar speeds are the black grouse and the ptarmigan. Anyone who has shot driven grouse coming down-wind driven on by a stiff October breeze will understand the stern test of your ability they represent.

 Walked-up grouse in the balmy days of August are less demanding though. That is not to denigrate them, some of the finest sporting days of my life have been spent walking up late summer grouse, but it serves to illustrate the point that discussion about the speed of game birds can vary hugely in a variety of conditions, and on a shoot day it is not all about speed. It is about the total sum of the experience, not any one aspect.

 The few black grouse I have seen on the wing - they were not on our men - I would put at a little slower than red (some readers have been in touch to disagree so it may have been the conditions), but ptarmigan in the UK may be a different prospect entirely because of their habitat. Above the tree line, you are likely to be breathing hard as a covey of ptarmigan burst from the rocks and if you are on the wrong foot with your heavy over and under in the strong wind inherent on mountain tops, you are the one who is likely to be short on speed and they will look like white rockets angling away from you. Even the more common red grouse when going into the same stiff breeze late in the season can slow up markedly compared to a wind-assisted one so true comparisons are difficult. Every shot should be taken on its merit.

 OPTICAL ILLUSIONS

The fact that pheasants fly faster than partridges when all things are equal, and yet the pheasant looks slower, is an optical illusion that catches out even experienced shots during mixed species days. You will often see very good partridge shots take a little time to adjust their settings as we move from September and October partridges into November and December pheasants. This illusion is created by the fact that larger objects often appear to us to be moving slower than smaller objects. A larger object stays on our retina longer and our visual acuity is greater on a larger bird than it is on a smaller bird. With high birds in deeper valleys pheasants appear to be slower because they take longer to cross our line of vision than does a smaller, closer partridge.

 The faster wing beat of the smaller bird adds to this illusion. Our ability visually to pick up the bird is also affected by light conditions. Low contrast conditions mean that pheasants in the dull, grey skies of October appear to be moving slower than partridges through brilliant blue skies of September. The Bezold-Brücke shift as it is known is also the reason that cars appear to travel more slowly in fog making driving conditions much more dangerous. It is for these reasons that a high, dark pheasant out of the mizzle of the West Country, will appear to be far slower than a French partridge out of the azure blue of a late summer sky even though the opposite is true. Pheasants often set their wings and plane down from great heights too, the foreshortened angle making them much harder to read for speed. Given the factors ranged against our accurate judgement of speed it is a wonder we hit anything at all.

ON THE FORESHORE

Old wildfowlers will often advise newcomers to goose shooting to 'treat the head of the goose like a teal’ because the same illusion of pheasant and partridge is true for wildfowl only to a much greater degree. A large goose appears to be a cumbersome, slow-moving object until you put your muzzle up to the bird and realise just how fast they can be going when they are in range. Teal it might surprise some are regarded as one of the slower ducks averaging around 30-35mph but it reinforces the point that size can lead to an optical illusion.

Mallard, according to research regularly clock over 50mph and pintail even faster. The fastest duck ever recorded was a red-breasted merganser which was followed by an aeroplane in the US. The bird achieved an airspeed of 100mph.

Waders are also considered to be some of the great speed merchants although snipe and woodcock are very different animals. The small size of the snipe ensures we have problems picking it up clearly as it first raucously flushes from the sedge and it often appears as a blur in the open landscape. Its evolved countermeasure to predation is to jink low and often before rising high to disappear into the great expanse of sky. It makes it look incredibly fast and gave rise to the eponymous term for all accurate shooters especially in the military but the reason they are difficult to shoot is not necessarily their speed alone. In May 2000 biologists tagged ten snipe and tracked them migrating from Sweden to sub-Saharan Africa. The 4,200 mile journey took them only two days at an average cruising speed of 60mph. Golden Plover too regularly attain this speed and were the subject of an early debate on which bird was fastest (it subsequently lead to the Guiness Book of Records).

WOODCOCK

A right and left of a woodcock is considered one of the hardest to pull off but not necessarily for their speed as they are often regarded as comparatively slow-flying birds. Their defence mechanism is camouflage, a wide field of vision and the ability to jink through dense woodland. What they lack in speed they make up for in agility but the action often happens relatively close to the gun and their rapid change of direction means we may underestimate their true speed and line. When they put real effort into straight-line flight as they clear a block of woodland their top speed becomes clear and is faster than is commonly supposed, but they tend not to rely on it as moving in a straight line makes them predictable for a predator and woodcock have other talents.

 Although some of the best shots of all time have said that down-wind teal on the foreshore are up there with late-season grouse in the teeth of a gale for difficulty, the same also consider the second bird of a right and left at pigeon to be just as difficult a shot in a good wind.

 You can certainly see why when roost shooting as your first bird tumbles through the tree tops on a windy February night, you then go looking for the bird that was in formation with it to go for the second of a memorable brace only to find the incredible agility of the woodpigeon means that with a deft flick of the wing and flare of the tail it has caught the full force of the wind and doubled its speed in a moment to escape. Any shot is likely to punch a hole in the evening sky, nothing more. Speed of the bird matters as much as line and angle but for athleticism and the ease of which they harness the power of the wind I have to give the humble woodpigeon the laurels for their all-round flying ability.

first published in the shooting times, march, 2021