748 MR. W. G. CLARKE OX BIRD-LIFE OF THE MERES. 
time and then went off in the direction of the park meres. 
Three ducks refused to rise. Two appeared to be duck 
Mallard and followed a pure white “ Witch-duck ” ; wherever 
it led they swam after. It kept as far from us as the width 
of the mere would allow, but no noise sufficed to make it take 
flight. From end to end of the mere — as on September 4th, 
1908 — stretched a bed of Polygonum amphibium in full bloom, 
forming a covering of bright pink, a most beautiful sight. 
On November 5th, 1904, I went very cautiously up the bluff 
on Langmere, but directly my head appeared, all the ducks, 
which seemed extremely shy and were mostly Mallard, rose 
en masse , and divided into two flocks, one of about 200, and 
the other of 150, which after flying round once went off in the 
direction of Thompson Water. 
Ringmere, Langmere and Fowlmere each furnished a pair 
of Gadwall on May 23rd, 1908. At a distance they are dis- 
tinguishable by the white speculum, by riding high out of the 
water, and by the slender appearance of neck and head which 
when flying makes the wings appear as though they were set 
far back. Nearer at hand the median wing-coverts which 
are a rich chestnut serve as a ready means of identification. 
On the north-west bank of Ringmere, among the dead bracken 
fronds of the previous year, and in the open save for a shelter- 
ing clump on the north-east, was a Gad wall’s nest with two 
rotten eggs and five or six hatched. On the south-west 
marge of Langmere we found a nestling not quite feathered. 
It did not move but squatted on the marshy soil and watched 
us with its beady eyes. A few minutes later when we came 
back, it was nowhere to be seen though the old birds had 
certainly not been up to it. In a letter to me in October, 1907, 
Mr. Heatley Noble of Henley-on-Thames, said : “I well 
remember the first pair of Gadwall we killed at Two-mile- 
bottom, and a few years later it was the commonest duck on 
the river. We shot sixty or more in two days. That year 
I killed nine different varieties of duck in two days — Scaup, 
Tufted, Mallard, Wigeon, Gadwall, Teal, Merganser, Pochard 
and Goldeneye. The last time I shot down the river I did 
not see nearly as many Gadwall as of old.” On the meres, 
