THE WIGEON. 377 



David Robertson of Glasgow, and had various opportunities of 

 conversing with a party of shore-shooters who were watching for 

 wild ducks, and who appeared to be killing large numbers of this 

 species. On enquiry, we were told that each of these men earned 

 as much as <2 per week by disposing of the birds they killed with 

 ordinary fowling pieces. They were intelligent men in their way, 

 and seemed tolerably well acquainted with the habits of wild 

 fowl, as no doubt they might, seeing the abundance of material 

 before them for study. The bay was literally full of birds. At a 

 moderate computation, there would be about eight hundred or 

 one thousand Wigeon alone in a single flock within three hundred 

 yards of where we stood. Flocks of fifteen or twenty were 

 constantly rising from the water and steering eastwards to the 

 various feeding grounds exposed by the receding tide along the 

 coast. At these flocks the watchers, who lay concealed behind 

 the sand-hills, fired many random shots, yet the disturbance caused 

 no diminution of their numbers. The mere pot-hunter will not 

 spend a shot upon any bird that is not marketable; hence his 

 ordinary spoil has little or no interest to the ornithologist. When 

 these men, however, learned that we collected birds, they brought 

 us during our stay a daily supply which utterly astonished us, 

 besides affording a pretty sure guide to the numbers of the various 

 species frequenting that part of the coast. The Wigeon and mallard 

 were by far the most numerous, the teal plentiful, and the golden 

 eye, merganser, and shelldrake, far from rare. A brace of Wigeon 

 now before me vividly recall their fate in the estuary I am now 

 speaking of. I had been for some time in the company of the duck 

 shooters, when it was found that the tide was sufficiently far out to 

 admit of the river being forded. One of the men had already crossed 

 the sands, and was nearly thigh deep on his way to the other side, 

 being anxious for a first chance. The sun was setting in a blaze 

 of crimson and gold, throwing a deeply impressive shade over the 

 stretch of sand and water. The man paused, as we imagined, for a 

 little reflection on the singular sublimity of the scene, and stood 

 nearly waist deep gazing cloudward a few seconds with no other 

 apparent intention. In another second, however, we were un- 

 deceived ; there was a sudden upward movement of his arms, and, 

 after a momentary flash of light, we heard a report such as a duck 

 shooter's gun alone can make, and the two poor wanderers, part 

 of a small flock we had not observed, fell into the river not far 



