ISO THE BIRDS OF DORSET. 



August they repair to the cornfields till disturbed 

 by the harvest-people. They then frequent the 

 rivers pretty early in the evening, and show ex- 

 cellent sport to any one who has patience to wait 

 for them." 



The only wild-fowl decoys in Dorsetshire are thus 

 described by Sir R Payne Gallwey in his recently 

 pubhshed work on decoys : ^ — 



"At Abbotsbury, the residence of the Earl of 

 Ilchester, eight miles south-west of Dorchester, at the 

 head of the Fleet estuary, between St. Catherine's 

 Chapel and the sea-shore, is an ancient decoy with 

 four pipes. The date of its construction is not 

 known to the owner, but it is on land that formerly 

 belonged to the abbots of the monastery of St. 

 Peter, and is, therefore, said to have existed before 

 the Dissolution. Great numbers of wild-fowl — 

 Duck, Teal, Wigeon, Tufted Duck, Pochard, and 

 Golden-Eye — visit it ; but in consequence of there 

 being a good deal of open water outside the decoy, 

 and shooting carried on during the season, no very 

 large captures are made. About ten or twelve at a 

 time, and a couple of hundred in the course of the 

 winter, is the average take. 



"At Morden, six miles north of Wareham, on the 

 property of Miss Drax of Charborough Park, there 

 used to be a decoy until 1856, when it ceased to 

 be worked, and since then the shooting around it 

 having been let, the place has been too much dis- 



^ "The Book of Duck Decoys, tlieir History, Construction, and 

 Management," 4to, 18S6, pp. 71-74. 



