274 WILD-FOWL AND SEA-FOWL OF GREAT BRITAIN 



how on one or two occasions within present memory 

 the capture of Pochards, or Dun-birds as they are 

 locally called, has been so great at one drop or pull 

 of the net, that a wagon and four horses have been 

 required to remove them, and he states further that 

 these birds have been known to resort in flio-hts so 

 numerous as apparently to cover every available 

 space of water in the pond, and that five hundred 

 to six hundred Pochards at one rise of the net was 

 in those days considered quite a moderate capture. 



I have lived to see some remarkable changes, 

 and to see the fowl decrease in numbers. This is 

 to be laid not so much to the changes as to the 

 increased facilities for getting to the haunts of fowl, 

 which was at one time impossible. Now any person 

 who has money enough to pay the gun tax and the 

 hire of a man and skiff can go Gull-crippling, or at 

 least make a try at it. It is pop, pop, pop, and 

 nothing comes of it unless a Gull, presumably bent 

 on suicide, flies almost up to the gun-barrel. How 

 many powder-wasters and Gull-frighteners I have 

 seen ! Sad fatalities occur amongf these still wild 

 haunts, do what man will to bring them under his 

 control. These, however, will not be mentioned, 

 my aim being to deal more with the bright than 

 the sad side of the matter, although mishaps take 

 place in covert shooting as well as when by the 

 tide. 



There is a strangely-built diving-duck which is 

 known to shooters as the White-faced Duck, Frost- 

 backed Wigeon, Sj^oonbill Duck, and Scaup. It 



