1 62 WILD-FOWL DECOYS IN ESSEX. 



alarming the remainder of the flock. The method indeed may still 

 be practised, but the fowl do not come in anything like their former . 

 numbers to be caught. 



The form of decoy as we now know it was probably (like many 

 another invention) the result of gradual improvement in earlier and 

 simpler methods of capture. The " tunnel net," for example, was 

 a more ancient and primitive device for taking partridges and wild 

 ducks. This net, as its name implies, was shaped like a tunnel, 

 gradually diminishing in size until it terminated in a bag or purse 

 from which, when the birds were once driven in, there was no escape. 

 On each side of the entrance to the tunnel upright nets about 

 eighteen inches high stretched away like wings, and being set in a 

 V shape, with the tunnel at the apex, the birds were slowly but surely 

 directed towards what seemed to them the only aperture for escape, 

 namely, the entrance to the tunnel. Once within the entrance 

 return was hopeless ; for the fowler hastened up, and driving them 

 forward, easily secured them at the other end. 



But why, it may be asked, did the birds not rise and fly away in 

 good time ? For two reasons : in the case of partridges they were 

 driven so slowly by the fowler behind a " stalking-horse " that they 

 suspected no danger, and merely ran gradually away from him 

 towards the net ; in the case of wild ducks an unfair advantage was 

 taken by driving them when they were moulting, and had temporarily 

 lost the use of their flight feathers.^ In this case, if surprised in the 

 marshes, or in pools where the water was too shallow to enable them 

 to escape by diving, they might be driven like a flock of sheep to 

 their destruction, and when several hundred yards of netting were 

 used, and a number of beaters employed, the quantity of wild-fowl 

 thus captured in a day was something extraordinary. 



Thus Willughby tells us in his " Ornithology" (1678), that some- 

 times as many as four hundred boats were used for driving wild-fowl, 

 and that he knew of as many as 4,600 birds being taken at one 

 drive in Deeping Fen, Lincolnshire. Pennant, in his " British 

 Zoology," states that 31,200 ducks were taken in one season in ten 

 decoys near Wainfleet; and Gough, in his edition of Camden's 

 "Britannia," mentions that in 1720, three thousand ducks were to 

 his knowledge driven into nets at one time. 



2 For some account of the moulting of the flight feathers in the common wild duck, the reader 

 maybe referred to Waterton's "Essays on Natural History" (first series, pp. 196-202), Baron 

 d'Hamonville, "Bulletin de la Soci^te Zoologique de France" (vol. ix., pp. !Oi-io6), and 

 Harting, "Zoologist," 1886, pp. 228-233.. 



