162
WILD-FOWL DECOYS IN ESSEX.
alarming the remainder of the flock. The method indeed may still
be practised, but the fowl do not come in anything like their former
numbers to be caught.
The form of decoy as we now know it was probably (like many
another invention) the result of gradual improvement in earlier and
simpler methods of capture. The "tunnel net," for example, was
a more ancient and primitive device for taking partridges and wild
ducks. This net, as its name implies, was shaped like a tunnel,
gradually diminishing in size until it terminated in a bag or purse
from which, when the birds were once driven in, there was no escape.
On each side of the entrance to the tunnel upright nets about
eighteen inches high stretched away like wings, and being set in a
V shape, with the tunnel at the apex, the birds were slowly but surely
directed towards what seemed to them the only aperture for escape,
namely, the entrance to the tunnel. Once within the entrance
return was hopeless; for the fowler hastened up, and driving them
forward, easily secured them at the other end.
But why, it may be asked, did the birds not rise and fly away in
good time? For two reasons: in the case of partridges they were
driven so slowly by the fowler behind a "stalking-horse" that they
suspected no danger, and merely ran gradually away from him
towards the net; in the case of wild ducks an unfair advantage was
taken by driving them when they were moulting, and had temporarily
lost the use of their flight feathers.2 In this case, if surprised in the
marshes, or in pools where the water was too shallow to enable them
to escape by diving, they might be driven like a flock of sheep to
their destruction, and when several hundred yards of netting were
used, and a number of beaters employed, the quantity of wild-fowl
thus captured in a day was something extraordinary.
Thus Willughby tells us in his "Ornithology" (1678), that some-
times as many as four hundred boats were used for driving wild-fowl,
and that he knew of as many as 4,000 birds being taken at one
drive in Deeping Fen, Lincolnshire. Pennant, in his "British
Zoology," states that 31,200 ducks were taken in one season in ten
decoys near Wainfleet; and Gough, in his edition of Camden's
"Britannia," mentions that in 1720, three thousand ducks were to
his knowledge driven into nets at one time.
2 For some account of the moulting of the flight feathers in the common wild duck, the reader
may be referred to Waterton's "Essays on Natural History" (first series, pp. 196-202), Baron
d'Hamonville, "Bulletin de la Societe Zoologique de France" (vol. ix., pp. 101-106), and
Harting, "Zoologist," 1886, pp. 228-233.