THE 8H0VELEE. 



149 



rather with that of Mr. Lubbock, who describes it as 

 " more frequent with us in spring and summer than in 

 the depth of winter"; and Mr. Fen wick Hele, of 

 Aldeburghj speaks of it as occurring in Suffolk " most 

 frequently in the early spring." On the other hand Mr. 

 Cordeaux, in his " Birds of the Huniber district/' shows 

 its abundance, in winter, in North Lincolnshire, by the 

 numbers taken in the Ashby decoy,^ and adds, " these 

 however, represent only a portion of the shovelers 

 visiting the Ashby pond during that period, as many of 

 the flocks would leave again without entering the nets." 

 Having carefully tabulated all the specimens entered 

 in my note books from 1850 to 1875 inclusive, I find that 

 I have seen this duck, in a wild state, either alive or 

 freshly killed in every month of the year, but out of a 

 total of sixty examples of both sexes, twenty occurred 

 in March and about half that number in April, mostly 

 in pairs. Of those killed in November, December, 

 January, and February, the numbers are four, seven, two, 

 and one respectively, of which nearly all were males, a 

 circumstance which seems to indicate that in this, as in 

 several other kinds of fowl, there is, to a certain extent, a 

 separation of sexes during the winter months, the ducks 

 and young birds passing south in advance of the drakes ; 

 as exemphfied, more particularly, in the case of goos- 

 anders, merganzers, smews, and golden eyes, of which 

 the old males rarely appear on our coast till after a long 

 and severe frost. Such statistics are, of course, only 

 valuable as indicating the relative proportions in which 

 these birds have visited us, at different seasons, during 

 a period of twenty-five years, and though lately the 

 bulk of the fowl killed in this county has been sent 



* In thirty-five years, from 1833-34 to 1867-68, two hundred 

 and eighty-five shovelers vs^ere netted in this small decoy, the largest 

 number in any one winter (1860-61) being 34. 



