75 



HISTORY OF D^ECOYS- {continued.) 



CHAPTER VI. 



Decoys in the County of Essex. 



Though this county never possessed any fens or meres, like Norfolk, 

 Suffolk, Lincoln, Cambridge, Huntingdon or Northampton, still, owing 

 to its extensive sea-coast and numerous tidal estuaries, it contains many 

 disused Decoys. Essex, indeed, rivals Lincoln and Norfolk in this respect. 

 As may be expected, the Essex Decoys were chiefly placed near the banks 

 of the great estuary of the River Blackwater. 



This sheet of water is some dozen miles in length and two miles in 

 width, — with its shores, and outside its mouth, flanked for miles at low 

 water with fine feeding-grounds, in the shape of beds of ooze to attract 

 and support wildfowl. Round the estuary of the Blackwater at least 

 fourteen or more flourishing Decoys existed. To the north of the 

 Blackwater, the Hamford Water estuary, with its multitudinous creeks, 

 small islands, and channels had, as might be expected, attendant 

 Decoys. Still further north, on the border of the county, and dividing it 

 from Suffolk, is the estuary of the Stour, with also some Decoys on its 

 banks, a sheet of water but one-third less in size than that of the Black- 

 water. In the southern part of Essex, between the Blackwater and the 

 mouth of the Thames, the estuary of the River Crouch, with its many 

 arms and backwaters, afforded protection and food to the wildfowl that 

 frequented the coast of Essex and its mud-flats. The fowl taken in 

 the Essex Decoys were, and indeed are, chiefly Wigeon, as they are 

 lured to their capture from the sea-coast, — whereon these birds always 

 predominate among the Duck tribe. For this reason there are no Decoys 

 in Essex distant from the sea, as is the case in several of our other 

 eastern counties wherein large meres and fens existed to attract wildfowl, 

 and in which Duck, Mallard, and Teal were abundant, and therefore 

 usually taken in the Decoys. 



