196
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
area was between Hamford Water and the Stour, where there
was a group of nine. The only decoys at any distance from salt
water are Wormingford and Felsted. The most effective way
to obtain an impression of the positions of the decoys is to con-
sult the map in A History of the Birds of Essex, on which all but
two are marked.
Although the amount of information available to us regarding
the decoys of the County is very limited, yet we are fortunate
in having at our disposal a first-hand account of the art of
decoying, probably as good as ever was written. Fortunately
it was based on experiences obtained at an Essex pond, namely
Marsh House. The article appeared in The Field in 1868,
under the title "Decoy Ponds," and was signed "P.," but
Christy states that it was written by Mr. Jacob L. Pattisson,
private secretary to the Rt. Hon. W. H. Smith. This account is
most valuable and as it relates to Essex a great part of it is used
here much in the words of its writer. The following particulars
are derived more especially from a well-known pond near
Tillingham, on the coast of Essex, where the writer (J. L. P.)
has lately through the kindness of the owners witnessed during
several days and at the most favourable time of the year the
operations being carried on with great success. To these gentle-
men and their skilful and obliging decoyman—one of the
Skelton family, mentioned in almost every treatise or description
that has been written on decoys, and who have been hereditary
decoymen from father to son in Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Essex
for many generations past—he has to give thanks. Decoy ponds
formerly were of great size, those in Norfolk being as much
as a hundred acres in extent, the largest nearly a thousand, but
experience proved that fewer were caught than in smaller ponds
and that the most successful of all were not more than two
acres in extent. The pond at Tillingham covers about an acre
and a quarter. It stands in the marshes, about half-a-mile
from the sea-wall, on the other side of which, at low water, is
a great expanse of mud extending nearly two miles, and where
in severe weather thousands and tens of thousands of Wild Geese,
Duck, Wigeon, etc., will congregate, while still more numerous
flocks of Plover, Dunlins (Oxbirds), Curlew, etc., skim up and
down among them. The decoy is surrounded by large beds of
tall-growing rushes and plantations of willow and other trees,
which serve at the same time to shelter the wild-fowl, and to hide
from them the approach of human beings and other things
likely to alarm them. Wild-fowl are easily alarmed by noise
and everything is done to maintain silence. The sense of smell
is also strongly developed, and they easily scent and take alarm
at anyone approaching on the windward side. It is said that