WATERFOWL 
HAD these notes been written from the 
standpoint of sport, the three familiar 
groups of birds, which together make up this 
world-wide aquatic family, might better 
have borne their alternative title " wildfowl " 
with its covert sneer at the hand-reared 
pheasant and artificially encouraged part- 
ridge that, between them, furnish so much 
comfortable sport to those with no fancy for 
the arduous business of the mudflats. It is 
true that, of late years, the mallard has, in 
experienced hands, made a welcome addition 
to the bag in covert shooting, as those will 
remember who have shot the Lockwood Beat 
on the last day of the shoot at Nuneham ; 
and there is historic evidence of " wild " 
duck having been reared for purposes of 
sport with hawks hi the reign of Charles I. 
Yet such armchair shooting of wildfowl was 
ignored by Colonel Hawker and the second 
Earl of Malmesbury, both of whom, gunning 
in the creeks and estuaries of the south coast, 
made immense bags of ducks and geese, 
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