180 TRE BIRDS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



completes my list of Pintail records up to date of 

 present writing. Although I have met with this 

 species in great numbers in Ireland and various parts 

 of Southern Europe, I can hardly claim more than a 

 distant acquaintance with it in a wild state, for I 

 have always found it to be one of the most wary of 

 birds, and its predilection for open expanses of water 

 renders it specially difficult of approach. The few 

 that I have shot were obtained by chance shots, 

 generally at the morning flight-time ; but in Epirus, 

 w^here the Pintail abounded in winter, I never got an 

 evening shot at this species at the warm swamp in 

 which I repeatedly made good bags of other wild- 

 fowl. I feel sure that this Duck feeds to a great 

 extent ly day in shallow open waters. I never, to 

 the best of my recollection, flushed a Pintail within 

 gunshot from covert of any sort. On the sea-coast 

 these birds consort much with Wigeon, but on the 

 vast marshes of the lower Guadalquivir which are 

 frequented by thousands of Pintails, the flocks 

 seemed to keep apart from those of other species. 

 Although, as I have already said, the Pintail is 

 generally exceedingly wary, it is easily taken on the 

 decoys, and I am acquainted with one instance in 

 which seventy-two of these Ducks were killed by one 

 shot from a heavy shoulder-gun fired from behind a 

 trained horse ; this last atrocity, however, was com- 

 mitted upon a mass of freshly arrived and probably 

 wearied birds. Very few Pintails remain to breed in 

 the British Islands ; I am personally acquainted with 

 only one locality in which they are supposed to do 

 so with any regularity, and certainly have done so 

 occasionally. A large number of these birds are sent 

 to London alive from the Dutch decoys in February 



