WHAT WILDFOWLING REALLY IS 17 
ing description. The strange spots where he finds himself; the lonely 
nature of his surroundings; the quaint cries he hears when the fowl 
and shore birds are about; the briny smell of the sea; the ever- 
varying tide; the now rough and now smooth wind ; the difference in 
the same spots when seen first by daylight and then visited at night; 
the self-reliance which the wildfowl shooter must place upon his 
individual resources, and his perpetual struggle against all the 
elements combined—everything tends to make of the pursuit one 
which I have no hesitation in calling the most manly and the most 
fascinating of all the pursuits which the sportsman may addict 
himself to.” 
How true this is the wildfowler alone knows. To him 
many of the secrets of nature are disclosed. On the far 
saltings, on the lonely marshes of the sea, he has wonderful 
moments. 
Dawns that are august in their splendour rise for him in his 
lonely eagerness. Keen white moonlights for him irradiate a 
world unknown to ordinary folk. He floats on dark, mys- 
terious waterways, hearing sounds, whispers, strange cries 
and calls that no one else ever hears. 
Is there a more wonderful sound in the whole of nature 
than that of a great skein of geese upon the wing? I think 
not. 
Nearer and nearer it comes: the deep baying notes, the 
high shrill calling, like a pack of ghostly hounds in the dark- 
ling sky! The thrill of it is incommunicable, the music in- 
comparable, and at last the full notes rush into being, and the 
great birds are all around. He who has heard the melancholy 
notes of the curlew at dawn when the marshes are waking, 
who listens to the mysterious whistle of the widgeon, as they 
pass high over his punt, and for whom a sedge of herons 
make their harsh calling at evening, knows much that is 
denied to other men. 
The fowler has his own ritual, etiquette, and phraseology 
also. If he is punctilious in preserving the traditions of his 
B 
