FEBRUARY 55 



feet in length. The hut is intended for the temporary 

 disposal of the fowl after a successful working. The 

 decoy-man tells of fourteen hundred ducks having once 

 been taken in a week. 



Apart from the special features of the Fen Country 

 as a limited area, much of the old waterside life of bird 

 and insect and plant is still to be found, but we must 

 search for it more widely — by rippling brooks of the 

 southern shires, about the quiet upper reaches of the 

 Thames, or on the banks of slow midland streams, whose 

 sluggish surface is only disturbed by the plunging of a 

 water-vole or the rising of a fish. We shall find it 

 where the mill-water forms a still lakelet, water-lily 

 grown, or beside the moats which encircle the old 

 timbered houses of the western shires. Even com- 

 mercial activity and increase of population have had 

 the unforeseen result of providing new haunts for 

 aquatic birds. There is scarcely a sea-bird — gull, 

 tern or wader — which does not visit at one time or 

 another the great canal reservoirs near the watershed 

 of Trent and Severn. The Crested Grebes have in 

 fact made themselves as much at home there as in the 

 Broad district itself. Moreover, the vast water- 

 schemes of Liverpool, Birmingham and other great 

 cities have furnished a series of noble lakes which hold 

 out fresh and increasing attractions to water-fowl. 

 Sewage farms, too, are much frequented by gulls and 

 by wading birds, such as redshanks, ringed plover, 



