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SUNDRY INCIDENTS OF FOWL AND FOWLING. 



The foregoing chapters describe the ordinary daily life and 

 habits of our coast wildfowl ; but denizens of such bleak and 

 exposed haunts are necessarily subject to all the vicissitudes 

 of our winter weather, which often vary their daily routine. 

 Thus, during very rough seas, wildfowl are unable to 

 ** weather it" outside, and are driven to seek shelter else- 

 where. At such times the estuaries may sometimes be seen 

 fairly packed withWigeon, &c., at midday; but one can only 

 watch them covetously through the binocular, for no punt 

 can stand the sea. 



The effect of sudden gales are interesting as showing 

 that these are sometimes quite unforeseen by the fowl — 

 usually fairly accurate weather-prophets. This the following 

 couple of extracts from old shooting note-books, will serve to 

 illustrate : — " January 5th. — Many hundreds of ducks left 

 for sea early this morning ; but about 9 a.m., a sudden 

 easterly squall coming away and knocking up a nasty sea, 

 the whole of them returned inside for shelter. Shot one 

 Wigeon drake as they passed up, but there was too much sea 

 on to follow them." The other incident was with the Geese, 

 and occurred during very severe weather. It was flood tide 

 shortly before dusk, and the Geese had just gone to sea in a 

 solid body several thousand strong, M'hen a sudden and 

 severe gale came away from S.E., driving us for safety into 

 the southern (and most distant) corner of the harbour. Here 

 we had hauled the punt ashore and were trying to keep our- 

 selves warm by running up and down the narrow interval 

 between sea and snow — literally "between the devil and the 

 deep sea!" — and with no very cheery feelings as to our 

 prospects for the night in that desolate spot amidst snow- 



