CHAPTER XXXV 



CONTRASTS IN WILDFOWLING 



I. — Mild Weather and Blank Days and Nights 

 (January 1886) 



Descriptions of wildfowling usually relate to successful 

 attempts made under the favourable auspices of severe 

 weather. One seldom reads of what has been done 

 (rather, in many cases, not done) under the reverse 

 conditions. Perhaps, therefore, the following may 

 interest, as showing the other side of the picture, and 

 illustrating the habits of wildfowl during mild seasons. 

 Those who remember it, may object to the winter of 1886 

 being described as "mild"; and in point of fact it was 

 the most irregular winter in its intensity and erratic in its 

 distribution, that has occurred in the writer's experience. 

 In the same county, within twenty miles, we had both 

 winter and spring simultaneously : where I write (February 

 8th) there is not a sign of winter, but an hour's journey in- 

 land the snow lies several feet deep, roads and railways 

 are blocked, and all the rigours of severe winter prevail. 

 Throughout the north of England generally the snowfall 

 was local and "patchy," in some districts the frost having 

 held almost continuously for weeks, while elsewhere not a 

 vestige of snow was visible. Thus on the inland moors 



