340 LEAVES FROM MY NOTE-BOOK. 



A nearer view showed this to be a line of ducks' heads, all turned 

 in one direction. The birds were standing on the path in a long 

 line facing the water, the approach of the visitors having given the 

 signal of " eyes left " to the whole regiment. Some five or six 

 hundred mallard were soon afloat upon the water, while flight after 

 flight of widgeon were seen passing over at a great height from 

 the sea, to join those at the head of the lake. 



" Both wild-duck and widgeon leave the lake at night to feed 

 in the vast stretch of creeks, samphire, salt-marshes, and half- 

 reclaimed land which lends such strange beauty to the line of 

 shore between Wells and Blakeney. In their choice of the hour 

 of departure, these two species, so alike in form and in their habits 

 when in security, exhibit one of those unexplained differences in 

 degree of caution in the avoidance of danger, which is one of the 

 puzzles of the sportsman-naturalist. The wild-duck leave at dusk, 

 and nightly risk the chance of a shot from the ' gunners ' waiting 

 on the marshes at flight time. The widgeon wait till dark, and, 

 except on moonlight nights, seldom lose any of their number to 

 the gun. As the fowlers are tramping home across the flats, they 

 hear the widgeon ' like gales of wind ' rushing high over the 

 marshes ; but the flocks are invisible, except when the moon is for 

 a moment darkened by ' a misk o' ducks ' flitting across its beams 

 in the winter sky."''' 



These habits of the various species of wild-fowl enable one to 

 understand how the old hermits in their solitary cells in the wild 

 fens of Saxon times heard such inexplicable rustlings and move- 

 ments in the meres; such strange shrieks and wailings in the air, 

 so that to their excited fancy it seemed that the air and waters 

 teamed with evil spirits. And that weird flight of the widgeon in 

 flocks, invisible except when the moon is for a moment darkened 

 by a " misk o' ducks," gives meaning to the Celtic superstition 

 that the spirits of the dead could be heard wailing high in air, as 

 they sought their birthplace beyond the ocean. 



* Spectator, Jan. l8th, 1896. 



