180 THE BIRDS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



completes my list of Pintail records up to date of 

 present writing. Although I have met with this 

 species in great numbers in Ireland and various parts 

 of Southern Europe, I can hardly claim more than a 

 distant acquaintance with it in a wild state, for I 

 have always found it to be one of the most wary of 

 birds, and its predilection for open expanses of water 

 renders it specially difficult of approach. The few 

 that I have shot were obtained by chance shots, 

 generally at the morning flight-time ; but in Epirus, 

 where the Pintail abounded in winter, I never got an 

 evening shot at this species at the w^arm swamp in 

 which I repeatedly made good bags of other wild- 

 fowl. I feel sure that this Duck feeds to a: great 

 extent hy day in shallow open waters. I never, to 

 the best of my recollection, flushed a Pintail within 

 gunshot from covert of any sort. On the sea-coast 

 these birds consort much with Wigeon, but on the 

 vast marshes of the low^er Guadalquivir which are 

 frequented by thousands of Pintails, the flocks 

 seemed to keep apart from those of other species. 

 Although, as I have already said, the Pintail is 

 generally exceedingly wary, it is easily taken on the 

 decoys, and I am acquainted with one instance in 

 which seventy-two of these Ducks were killed by one 

 shot from a heavy shoulder-gun fired from behind a 

 trained horse ; this last atrocity, however, was com- 

 mitted upon a mass of freshly arrived and probably 

 wearied birds. Very few Pintails remain to breed in 

 the British Islands ; I am personally acquairited with 

 only one locality in which they are supposed to do 

 so with any regularity, and certainly have done so 

 occasionally. A large number of these birds are sent 

 to London alive from the Dutch decoys in February 



