''POKER" DUCKS 233 



Commoner is the scaup poker, a tame duck at all times, 

 that arrives in large flocks in September, and later on in 

 driblets of ten or a dozen. If the bunches of scaups on the 

 water be small, the gunner is able to scull up in the grey dawn 

 as near to them as he likes — close enough, indeed, to see the 

 whites above their broad bills ; and when they rise, just as 

 do the other pokers, he pours his deadly fire into them, bring- 

 ing the heavy ducks down with loud splashes into the icy 

 water, whence they are gathered and sent to market. And 

 so from September to March (when they leave) the scaups 

 are occasionally killed by the fowler. 



Commoner still is the tufted duck or black-headed poker, 

 or black and white poker, which arrives on the Broads 

 at the end of September or beginning of October, flighting 

 to the feeding-grounds of an evening, just in the same way 

 as the common pochard. In winter they seem to be shyer 

 than in the early spring, for the punt-gunner often cannot 

 get within shot of them ; but in early spring I have rowed 

 quietly up to within a boat's length of them, as they swam by 

 a reed-bush, where they feed as does the common pochard. 

 Their flight, too, resembles that of the common pochard ; but 

 they are a far more beautiful bird, their coats gleaming like 

 velvet and their bodies shining a greenish-black on a sunny 

 day, as they rise by flying along the water, gradually rising till 

 their legs clear the surface, when they rise up into the air, and 

 turning, go before the wind " like thunder," as the natives say. 

 At this season, too, they will sit on the broad all day, merely 

 flying up as a boat passes, wheeling round and round till it 

 has gone, when they return to dream, an the noisy coots 

 and waterhens will let them. But they leave us in March, 

 though I have been told that they have bred in this district 

 in recent years. 



And last and most common is the sandy-headed pochard. 

 When the October gales begin to blow, the "sondy- 

 headed pokers " begin to come over the sea in large or 

 small flocks, as the case may be, frequenting the icy waters 



