DECOYS AND THEIR WORKING 



stowed away, the decoy-man turns his attention to 

 other birds on the water. If the decoy is of large 

 extent he may be kept on the watch the greater part 

 of the day for ^opportunities to entice scattered 

 bunches of duck to their doom. Moonlight nights 

 often find him busy. Strange catches are sometimes 

 made in a decoy-pipe. About twenty years ago on a 

 Welsh decoy a heron and a peregrine the former 

 pursued by the latter dashed into the mouth of one 

 of the pipes, and were driven forward into the tunnel- 

 net and captured. In the pipes of the Wretham 

 decoy, the following have been taken at different 

 times : pheasant, partridge, snipe, woodcock, owl, 

 hawk, blackbird, thrush, and kingfisher, and two 

 mammals a rabbit and a pig ! 



Colonel Mussenden Leathes tells me that on the 

 once highly remunerative, but now dormant, Herring- 

 fleet decoy, with its ten pipes, there used to be 

 taken about 15,000 fowl in a season. As recently 

 as 1879 the owner took 207 duck in twenty-four 

 hours. Herringfleet lake, not so many years ago 

 still the haunt of the cormorant and the wild swan, 

 as it is now that of the beautiful crested grebe, was 

 ruined as a decoy by the proceedings of a neigh- 

 bour. One of the grebes came to a tragic end in 

 1903 before the eyes of Colonel Leathes and a 



