DECOYING POCHARDS. 
225 
The Common Pochard is about eighteen inches in length ; 
it has the head and upper parts of the neck brownish red ; 
the lower part of the neck and hind part of the back 
blackish brown; the back greyish white, minutely undu- 
lated with dark grey, as are also the lower parts; the 
abdomen and lower tail coverts are dusky, the tail itself 
being greyish brown. This bird has not about it any of the 
bright metallic tints which diversify and enliven many of 
the wild ducks ; the tints of its plumage are mostly sober and 
subdued, yet it is not devoid of beauty, and being remark- 
able for the excellence of its flesh, it is much sought by 
those who decoy or shoot wild fowl for a livelihood. 
While here (says Yarrell) it resorts to inland lakes and rivers, as 
well as the seashore, and though a difficult bird to take in a decoy, 
on account of its shyness and caution, and the facility with which it 
dives enabling it to get back under water in the pipe, yet, from 
being very abundant as a species, great numbers are taken every 
season. Montagu mentions that the method formerly practised for 
taking the Pochard was something similar to that of taking wood- 
cocks. Poles were erected at the avenues to the decoys, and after a 
great number of these birds had collected for some time on the pond 
to which water-fowl resort by day, and go to the neighbouring fens 
to feed by night, a net was, at a given time, erected by pulleys 
to these poles, beneath which a deep pit had previously been dug ; 
and as these birds, like the woodcocks, go to feed just as it is dark, 
and are said always to rise against the wind, a whole flock are 
sometimes taken together in /this manner ; for if once they strike 
against the net, they never attempt to return, but flutter down the 
net until they are received into the pit, from whence they cannot 
rise ; and thus we are told twenty dozen have been taken at one 
catch. 
When these ducks are excited or alarmed their note is 
a low whistle, but at other times it is a rough croak ; they 
are common in North America, dispersed and breeding 
over the fur countries in the summer, some of them going 
as far south in the winter as Carolina and Louisiana. In 
Europe a small number remain to breed in Holland, on the 
borders of the inland shores which are there so numerous. 
The nest is placed among rushes, or other coarse herb- 
age, and the eggs, from ten to twelve in number, are of a 
bufFy white colour. 
P 
