234 ANATID.E. 



tills country, appearing about tlie beginning of October, and 

 leaving us again in the spring to seek, during its breeding- 

 season, liiglier northern regions. 



While here it resorts to inland lakes and rivers, as well as 

 the sea-shore, and though a difficult bird to take in a decoy 

 on account of its shyness and caution, and the facility with 

 which it dives enabling it to get back under water in the 

 pipe, yet, from being very abundant as a species great num- 

 bers, according to authorities, are taken every season. Many 

 thousands are sold every winter in one market only in Lon- 

 don ; and Montagu mentions that the method formerly prac- 

 tised for taking the Pochard, was something similar to that of 

 taking Woodcocks. Poles were erected at the avenues to 

 the decoys, and after a great number of these birds had col- 

 lected for some time on the pond, to which wild-fowl resort 

 duly by day, and go to the neighbouring fens to feed by 

 night, a net was at a given time erected by pulleys to these 

 poles, beneath which a deep pit had previously been dug ; 

 and as these birds, like the Woodcocks, go to feed just as it 

 is dark, and are said always to rise against the wind, a whole 

 flock was sometimes taken together in this manner ; for if 

 once they strike against the net, they never attempt to re- 

 turn, but flutter down the net till they are received into the 

 pit, from whence they cannot rise, and thus we are told 

 twenty dozen have been taken at one catch. 



Dun-birds are, in general, remarkable for the excellence of 

 their flesh, and probably but little inferior to the far-famed 

 Canvass-backed Duck of the United States, which it very 

 closely resembles in the colour of its plumage, but our Dun- 

 bird is the smaller Duck of the two. As the Canvass-backed 

 Duck of America is considered to derive the goodness and 

 flavour for which it is so much esteemed from its taking a 

 considerable portion of a particular vegetable food,* and is 



* I)i. Nulliill, who is a bolanisl as well as an ornithologist, has nicntioni.il 



