AN OLD DUCK DECOY 
65 
accustomed to the work. Rabbits have honeycombed the mound 
and pay unwelcome visits to my cabbage bed, in spite of con- 
stant attention to the wire netting round the garden. There are 
larger and far more interesting animals than rabbits that make 
the decoy their home, and long may they live there in security 
and peace. Suspecting their presence, I spent an afternoon in 
search for otters. My attention was first drawn to a damp spot, 
where the vegetation was trampled down about four yards square. 
Here the otters are in the habit of carrying their prey. Quanti- 
ties of feathers, principally of moorhens, were trodden into the 
soft ground, but no remains of fish, or fur, or bones of water-rats 
could be discovered. Announcements of the slaughter of otters 
with the gun, or the cruel iron trap, are frequently made with a 
flourish of trumpets in the public press, and syndicates of fishing 
clubs read the news with joy. All the time we naturalists lament 
the persecution of a beautiful animal whose haunts are becoming 
fewer year by year. We question whether the otter’s character 
is half so black as the votaries of the rod are apt to paint it, and 
we beg them to stay their hand. The very day I discovered the 
whereabouts of otters I saw, disporting themselves in the river 
in a spot the size of my dining-room table, half-a-dozen large 
trout not twenty yards from where the moorhens had been 
eaten. Otters prefer eels to any other kind of fish, and turn 
over stones in the water in search of them. Need I say that 
eels are enemies to almost all other fish ? I have already pleaded 
for the otter in my “ Enemies of Trout ” ; will no other pen be his 
champion in Nature Notes? Having found where the otters 
fed, I set out in search of where they lived, and after examining 
some likely looking earths, hit upon an unobtrusive hole close to 
the water’s edge. This is their “ holt,” and is evidently much 
used, the ground immediately round it being well trampled and 
beautifully clean. A few yards farther on there is a large dead 
willow-tree that has fallen down, the stump, some 4 feet high, 
remaining upright in the ground. Here the otters often spend 
their time and repose in peace and safety. There are numbers 
of squirrels in the trees that shelter the decoy, far too many for 
ray liking, as they persecute the little birds and rob their nests. 
But they are attractive little animals, and part and parcel of 
spots like this. I wish they would not be quite so severe on my 
nuts and fruit ; but they will do it. 
As may be supposed, a great variety of birds take up their 
abode in the decoy. Owls live unmolested in the trees and are 
to be heard hooting at intervals almost every day, to say nothing 
of the night. Here, and in the grand ruins of the monastery at 
Castleacre, close by, they have splendid shelter. Herons are 
often to be seen standing in the still water, where they are more 
welcome than in the river. There are too many of them ; but 
this is merely a pious opinion out of love for the trout, and I 
do not interfere. Ducks of different kinds — principally mallard, 
teal and gadwall — often drop in, and if any of us appear in the 
