276 WILD-FOWL AND SEA FOWL OF GREAT BRITAIN 



just as fast as hooks could be baited. When the 

 water was clear, clouds of small creatures could be 

 seen going in and coming out of the cavernous 

 openings of those old and rotting piles. Even at 

 dead low water I never crept inside them, venture- 

 some even as I was, for some grim traditions hung 

 about those old pile wrecks. 



I should certainly never buy a Scaup Pochard to 

 eat. One of my earlier friends once sold a couple 

 to a person who had pestered him, as he said, to 

 let him have them. The man who bought them 

 insisted that they must be good to eat because they 

 looked so handsome. They were cooked, and the 

 attempt was made to eat them, but it somehow 

 failed. The next time that Scaup-eater met the 

 shooter he told him that he had had enough of 

 Frost-backs to last him a lifetime. 



They used to remind me when about their haunts 

 of the handsome Dutch luggers which sailed over 

 their diving-grounds, not over the rocks, though 

 certainly both birds and boats were built for the 

 water. When spring draws near they leave us for 

 their breeding stations in other lands. 



Shooting Scaup from a boat or punt is not so 

 easy to do as to read about, because although to 

 those on shore the water in a dead calm appears 

 quite pulseless, the sea is in reality never still, and 

 you, looking down on the weed-covered rocks below 

 where the wrack streams out and then drops down 

 again, are quite aware that the boat you are in does 

 not remain where you sculled her to. There is not 



