WILDFOWL AND WILDFOWLING 
shoveler drakes, wild swans, and many more. I remember reading (with 
amazement) the proposition soberly advanced that flamingos were 
“ protectively coloured.” Well ; from my experience of these birds in 
Spain, I should say that a regiment of British redcoats — the thin 
red line— marching across a ploughed field would hardly be more 
conspicuous than are the great five -feet, flame -hued flamingos in their 
usual environment of mud and muddy waters. The big gulls clearly owe 
no immunity to colour ; their three years’ adolescence in grey shows 
that. Again the females of several ducks are distinctly less conspicuous 
than their mates — a general rule which holds good throughout a great 
proportion of the animal world (our own race excepted). But in all the 
cases cited, the sexes (being monogamous) are of equal value in Nature’s 
scheme. This and other cognate theories possess, beyond doubt, a 
fascinating attraction to contemplative minds. But that very fascination 
has perhaps misled theorists to expand the operation of their favourite 
hypotheses far beyond the limits (if any) assigned by Nature. 
Nor can Nature’s plans ever be arbitrarily gauged or subjected to hard 
and fast rules. No one, I presume, would question the fact that some 
game-birds are, in degree, protectively coloured. Yet the one species 
that appears to offer the most exquisite example, uses the safeguard 
least. I refer to the grouse, which from mid -October onwards, disdains 
concealment as utterly as wildfowl do.* 
Passing over as too well-known to need special reference, their in- 
tensely specialized senses of sight and hearing — not that I estimate 
these faculties in wildfowl as being superior to those possessed by some 
other bird-groups, say the birds of prey, certain sea-gulls, gannets and 
some others — we come to the fact that wildfowl, in practice, are gifted 
with an extra safeguard which is virtually denied to game and the rest 
of the bird -world. I refer to the sense of smell. This faculty will usually 
reveal the human presence, though quite unseen, to either ducks or geese 
at considerable distances — in favouring circumstances, up to hundreds 
of yards. 
In curious contrast with game, which are the most stationary of all 
birds, wildfowl include the most cosmopolitan of wanderers. For one flight 
of a game-bird that exceeds a mile, fifty will fall short of half that distance. 
* The grouse is colour-protected, nevertheless — but, as it were, unconsciously and malgre lui — when, in the grey- 
brown atmosphere of late autumn, his dark form skims low over brown heather. Then you may see him as he 
tops a sky-line half-a-mile away; yet in the interval, aided maybe by some slight fold in the ground, he may be entirely 
lost to view even by the keenest eye — until he flashes up in your face not 50 yards away. 
395 
