Following on yesterday’s blog.
Peter Scott, whose print was mentioned yesterday, 1909-1989 and son of Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott, was a pioneer in stimulating an interest in British wildlife on the B.B.C. in the 1960s. He was a keen ornithologist, conservationist, painter and writer. He was a classic example of hunter turned conservationist being, as a young man, a ‘wildfowler’, that is someone who shoots for sport waterfowl and having one day a realisation that this was wrong and so devoted the rest of his life to the conservation of wildlife, in his case his especial interest being in waterfowl, particularly geese. This passion leading to his founding of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in 1946, this following P. Scott’s wartime service in the Royal Navy.
For a while P. Scott lived in a converted lighthouse at the mouth of the River Nene on the south coast of the Wash and near to Sutton Bridge. This isolated location gave scope for his studies of waterfowl behaviour and migration. The long-distance public right of way along the old clay bank flood defence between Sutton Bridge and West Lynn is known as the Peter Scott Way (Walk). Still today a small local ferry takes passengers (not vehicles) the few hundred yards across the canalised River Great Ouse back and forth between West Lynn and Kings Lynn. A mile or so upstream a modern road bridge carries the A17 over the River.