162 BIRDS OF CHESHIRE. 
There are no duck-decoys in Cheshire at the 
present day, but one was worked in the middle of 
the seventeenth century by Sir William Brereton, the 
Parliamentary General, at Dodleston, a place close to 
the then extensive and undrained marshes of the 
Dee, and therefore admirably suited for the purpose. 
Sir William appears to have taken great interest in 
decoys and their working, and constantly refers to 
those which he saw when travelling in Holland and 
elsewhere. In describing a visit he made to one, 
Gabriel Direckson of Delft, in 1634, he says :—‘ His coy 
is seated near his own and divers other houses and 
the highways and navigable rivers on both sides, 
nearer by much than Doddleston Bridge or Findloes 
House is to my coy. His coy hath five pipes as 
mine.’! These remarks furnish the only clue that 
exists as to the situation of the decoy, although it 
is noteworthy that a farm on the road between 
Dodleston and Chester is still known as the Decoy 
Farm. It is, however, obviously incorrect to suppose, 
as the editor of the Travels does, that the decoy 
was at Handforth, Sir William Brereton’s home in 
East Cheshire; and there appears to be no foundation 
whatever for Mr. Fletcher Moss’s statements that the 
site of the decoy is now a calico-printing works at 
Handforth, and that ‘Shovelers, Teal, Wigeon, Pell- 
starts (Pintails), Smeathes’ (Smews?) were formerly 
taken there. The author of the Travels says that 
these birds were captured at certain Dutch decoys, 
but from first to last he gives no particulars of the 
species taken at his own. Apart from his definite 
1 Travels in Holland, The United Provinces, England, Scotland, and 
Ireland, Sir William Brereton, Bart., edited by E. Hawkins, published 
by the Chetham Society. 
2 Zoologist, ser. 111. vol. xix. p. 106. 1895. 
