WILDFOWL AND WILDFOWLING 
that the swans were Whoopers: that they would remain where they had 
settled until the first steamer entered Copenhagen (which was then closed 
by ice) and that, within twenty-four hours thereafter, they would depart. 
Some weeks later this prediction was fulfilled to an hour. On Thursday, 
March 2, the ice broke up in the Sound, on Friday steamers entered Copen- 
hagen, and on Saturday morning, March 4, the swans had disappeared. 
For an amusing corollary I may refer readers to the volume quoted. 
WILDFOWLING AT HOME 
From the foregoing it will be clear that, due in the first place to their 
bleak and exposed haunts, and secondly to the intensely specialized 
development of all their innate self -protective faculties, the pursuit of 
wildfowl presents an enterprise which I verily believe stands unrivalled 
by any form of wild sport on earth. Moreover, this sport is free to all 
comers. There are no “preserves,” and the prizes fall only to those who 
are by nature best equipped to seize them. 
A psychological condition affecting these free wildfowl is that they 
represent when obtained “hard cash.” Each unit of their multitudes 
possesses a monetary value, and that in face of keen fowlers — mostly 
deep-sea fishermen — to whom dollars represent much. Probably no 
other British industry is more precarious than theirs, harder in its 
practice ; and yet so poorly repaid. Those little colonies of sea -fishers, 
scattered irregularly around our coasts, deserve well of their country; in 
various ways they are a valuable asset; yet their reward is disproportionate. 
They are away to sea long before the winter’s dawn, often in weather hardly 
fit to face, and a temperature more suited to Polar bears and walruses; 
yet the harvest of the sea is always uncertain, often scant, and in stormy 
periods it may be nil for days and weeks on end. Within their view there 
pass, day by day, in and out from the harbour, those gaggling skeins 
of geese and hordes of wigeon, every couple of which (could it be secured) 
is the equivalent, say, of three shillings. Thus a pack of 1,000 geese would 
sum up to a total of some £70 sterling — to them a fortune. No wonder 
the fowl are followed and harassed — never a chance to score off them 
neglected, whether by day or by night. That in practice so few, com- 
paratively speaking, are ever killed — I have roughly estimated the pro- 
portion as varying between 10 and 15 per cent — bears eloquent 
testimony to the intensely wild nature and wondrous vigilance of wildfowl 
in general, and British wildfowl in particular. 
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