2oo Poachers and Poaching. 



surely leave in autumn when the migratory im- 

 pulse is strong upon them. This instinct is 

 particularly marked in all sea-fowl, and wild 

 swans, geese, and ducks call loudly to their farm 

 cousins as they pass over. There is a great wild- 

 ness about the clangour and cries of migratory 

 fowl, coining as it does far up in the wintry sky. 

 Reverting to the breeding of the shelduck, the 

 parents have been observed conveying the newly- 

 hatched young to the sea on their backs when the 

 nest has been far inland. In Holland recesses 

 are cut in the dunes and sand-hills so as to en- 

 courage the birds to breed, and each morning the 

 nests are visited and the eggs collected. Ordi- 

 narily not more than a dozen eggs are laid, but 

 under this system as many as thirty are produced 

 by a single duck. After the iSth of June the 

 persecution ceases and the birds are allowed to 

 hatch in peace. Most of the nests are lined with 

 fine down little inferior in quality to that of the 

 eiders, this too becoming a commercial com- 

 modity. 



Being driven from their bleak northern haunts 

 by the ice, widgeon appear in immense flocks in 

 winter, and are by far the commonest of the 

 migratory ducks. They first begin to arrive about 

 October, and continue coming until the end of 

 the year. Although found upon inland lochs 

 and rivers, they love to frequent weed or grass- 

 grown ooze and mud-banks, where they sleep and 



