WATER-FOWL. 223 



As soon as they arrive among us, they are generally seen flying in 

 Hocks to make a survey of those lakes where they intend to take up 

 their residence for the winter. In the choice of these they have two 

 objects in view ; to be near their food, and yet remote from interrup- 

 tion. Their chief aim is to choose some lake in the neighbourhood 

 of a marsh, where there is at the same time a cover of woods, and 

 where insects are found in greatest abundance. Lakes, therefore, 

 with a marsh on one side, and a wood on the other, are seldom with- 

 out vast quantities of wild-fowl ; and where a couple are seen at any 

 time, that is a sufficient inducement to bring hundreds of others. 

 The ducks flying in the air, are often lured down from their heights 

 by the loud voice of the mallard from below. Nature seems to have 

 furnished this bird with very particular faculties for calling. The 

 windpipe, where it begins to enter the lungs, opens into a kind of bony 

 cavity, where the sound is reflected as in a musical instrument, that is 

 heard a great way off. To this call all the stragglers resort ; and in a 

 week or a fortnight's time, a lake that before was quite naked, is black 

 with water-fowl, that have left their Lapland retreats to keep company 

 with our ducks who never stirred from home. 



They generally choose that part of the lake where they are inac 

 cessible to the approach of the fowler, in which they all appear hud 

 died together, extremely busy and very loud. What it is can emp.oy 

 them all the day is not easy to guess. There is no food for them at 

 the place where they sit and cabal thus, as they choose the middle 

 of the lake ; and as for courtship, the season for that is not yet come ; 

 so that it is wonderful what can so busily keep them occupied. Not 

 one of them seems a moment at rest. Now pursuing one another, 

 now screaming, then all up at once, then down again , the whole 

 seems one strange scene of bustle, with nothing to do. 



They frequently go off in a more private manner by night to feed 

 in the adjacent meadows and ditches, which they dare not venture 

 to approach by day. In these nocturnal adventures they are often 

 taken ; for, though a timorous bird, yet they are easily deceived, and 

 every springe seems to succeed in taking them. But the greatest 

 quantities are taken in decoys ; which, though well known near Lon- 

 don, are yet untried in the remoter parts of the country. The man- 

 ner of making and managing a decoy is as follows : 



A place is to be chosen for this purpose far remote from the com- 

 mon highway and all noise of people. A decoy is best where there is 

 a large pond surrounded by a wood, and beyond that a marshy and un- 

 cultivated country. When the place is chosen, the pool, if possible, 

 is to be planted round with willows, unless a wood answers the pur- 

 pose of shading it on every side. On the south and north side of this 

 pool are two, three, or four ditches or channels, made broad towards 

 the pool, and growing narrower till they end in a point. These chan- 

 nels are to be covered over with nets, supported by hooped sticks 

 bending from one side to the other ; so that they form a vault or arch 

 growing narrower and narrower to the point, where it is terminated 

 by a tunnel-net, like that in which fish are caught in weirs. Along 

 the banks of these channels so netted over, which are called pipes 

 many hedges are made of reeds slanting to the edge of the channel, 

 the acute angles to the side next the pool. The whole apoaratiui 



