WILDFOWL AND WILDFOWLING 
attract wildfowl in countless multitudes. The shooting rights at Daimiel 
are held by an association of Spanish Grandees, whose skill with the gun 
(as well as the wondrous wildfowl resource of the locality) are attested 
by the following memoranda of results achieved. In favourable seasons, 
and when climatic conditions are suitable, as many as 1,000 ducks have 
been brought in by five guns as a result of a short day’s shooting- 
beginning, say, before dawn and ending by noon. The best individual 
total stands at 393 ducks ! while, for second place, his late Majesty 
King Alfonso XII ran that record very close with 381 gathered in three 
and a half hours’ shooting. Such results (with 12 -bore guns) will take 
a lot of beating in any part of the globe. Besides the ordinary species 
of ducks— already named — a noteworthy addition is furnished at Daimiel 
by the Red-crested pochard, a striking and singularly handsome member 
of the genus, whose portrait is given in “ Unexplored Spain.” 
As an index of the mobility of wildfowl, it may be added that ducks 
shot at dawn at Daimiel, are frequently found to be crop -full of rice. Now, 
the nearest rice -fields are at Valencia, on the Mediterranean, distant 
180 miles. Hence these ducks, merely as incident to a single night’s 
feeding, have journeyed 360 miles between dusk and dawn. 
To distinguish wildfowl at a distance.— \n ‘‘ The Art of Wildfowling ” (1896), 
I wrote instructions under this head, which, although now seventeen years 
old, I yet cannot pretend to improve, so carefully and accurately were they 
then thought out. The only excuse I can allege for recurring to the subject 
— ^two excuses, perhaps — are, that (1) my present readers may not all 
have read the work quoted, and (2) that I have since enjoyed further oppor- 
tunities of observing several of the less common wildfowl. Some of these, 
it may be, are British only in name, or by repute. 
Presuming the student to be at some remote spot on the coast, or on the 
shores of some broad estuary whereat wildfowl are accustomed to con- 
gregate, he will have opportunities, during each day’s cruise or ramble, 
to see infinite assemblages of such birds; but always at such distances 
that neither the best ornithological books ever written, nor the most 
elaborate studies in museums, will enable him to identify their various 
species. No written words will ever, by themselves, effect that result; 
nor will any effort of his, short of long years’ practical experience aboard 
a gunning-punt. In these pages I endeavour to crystallize, so far as such 
can be reduced to paper, the substance of some forty years’ keen study 
of wildfowl. 
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