48 THE BIRDS OF ESSEX. 



should have formerly abounded. On this subject Mr. Harting 

 writes (50. ii. 159) : — 



" We have only to look at the map of Europe to see how favourably the 

 county of Essex is situated to afford refuge to the vast flocks of wild-fowl which 

 migrating- southward at the approach of winter, come to us from Scandinavia and 

 countries further north, as well as from the opposite shores of Holland. 



" Looking more particularly at a map of the county, we cannot fail to be 

 struck at the number of important rivers (no less than six) which empty them- 

 selves into the sea along its coast, forming wide estuaries and tidal harbours, 

 some of them studded with islands and bordered in some places for many miles 

 with extensive marshes and mud-flats, which afford attractive feeding ground to 

 many species of Wild Duck, as well as to large flocks of Brent Geese. * * * 



" Viewing the country in its present condition, intersected by railways, with 

 thousands of acres of marsh-land reclaimed, drained, and cultivated, we can 

 form but a faint notion of what a paradise for wild-fowl the Essex coast 

 must have been before an increased population and extended civilisation 

 narrowed the limits of their domain. It is difficult to realise the state of things 

 which existed before the introduction of shot-guns in the i6th century, when 

 wild-fowl were killed with the cross-bow, with trained hawks, or with such kinds 

 of snares and nets as the ingenuity of man at that period could devise ; and we 

 have no better proof of their former abundance than the number of decoys which 

 once existed for their capture." 



Daniel says (6. ii. 478) that, by dropping down with the tide in 

 his punt, a man has been known to bring home 



" from four score to a hundred wild-fowl of various kinds in one night's excursion, 

 and this will not seem an exaggerated account when the multitudes which in 

 hard, frosty weather, with the wind at East or North-east, haunt the Blackwater 

 River, are known. The numbers that are seen in their day flights, and the 

 noises of the various kinds of a night are almost beyond belief. To the compiler, 

 prepared as he was to behold amazing quantities, they exhibited far beyond 

 what he was led to expect ; and to others who have seen their throngs, the 

 astonishment has been perhaps still greater. A punt-shooter of the name of 

 Bowles has been known to clear upwards of a hundred pounds in a season by his 

 gun. The wild-fowl were sold to the higglers, &c., at two shillings a couple, 

 one with the other. Allowing his expenses to be only thirty pounds, here were 

 2600 birds brought home — an immense destruction when the whole period allotted 

 to it does not much exceed five months. Forty-two Wigeonshave been killed at a 

 single shot in the daytime, and the difficulty of approaching the great flocks of 

 fowl in the light is tenfold. A man, in whose punt the compiler was, got eighteen 

 Wigeons at one shot, and many that were crippled escaped. If in the day or at 

 night the punters get a shot at the fowl at feed upon the ooze, they tie on their 

 ' plashes ' [which are] similar to the mud-pattens used in Hampshire, and collect 

 the spoil. * * * In the daj', shooting upon the river below Goldhanger in Essex, 

 at half-ebb, very extensive oozes are dry, where grows a long grass upon which 

 the wild-fowl feed. The nicety required is so to place the punt in some of the 

 creeks which intersect these oozes as to intercept the birds, either in coming to 

 their feed when the tide recedes, or when it makes so as to cover the feeding 

 ground, and drive them from the spot. It is then the shooter has full emplo3fment 

 an hour and a half or two hours, after which the fowl either get settled upon 



