48
THE BIRDS OF ESSEX.
should have formerly abounded. On this subject Mr. Harting
writes (50. ii. 159) :—
" We have only to look at the map of Europe to see how favourably the
county of Essex is situated to afford refuge to the vast flocks of wild-fowl which
migrating southward at the approach of winter, come to us from Scandinavia and
countries further north, as well as from the opposite shores of Holland.
" Looking more particularly at a map of the county, we cannot fail to be
struck at the number of important rivers (no less than six) which empty them-
selves into the sea along its coast, forming wide estuaries and tidal harbours,
some of them studded with islands and bordered in some places for many miles
with extensive marshes and mud-flats, which afford attractive feeding ground to
many species of Wild Duck, as well as to large flocks of Brent Geese. * * *
" Viewing the country in its present condition, intersected by railways, with
thousands of acres of marsh-land reclaimed, drained, and cultivated, we can
form but a faint notion of what a paradise for wild-fowl the Essex coast
must have been before an increased population and extended civilisation
narrowed the limits of their domain. It is difficult to realise the state of things
which existed before the introduction of shot-guns in the 16th century, when
wild-fowl were killed with the cross-bow, with trained hawks, or with such kinds
of snares and nets as the ingenuity of man at that period could devise ; and we
have no better proof of their former abundance than the number of decoys which
once existed for their capture."
Daniel says (6. ii. 478) that, by dropping down with the tide in
his punt, a man has been known to bring home
" from four score to a hundred wild-fowl of various kinds in one night's excursion,
and this will not seem an exaggerated account when the multitudes which in
hard, frosty weather, with the wind at East or North-east, haunt the Blackwater
River, are known. The numbers that are seen in their day flights, and the
noises of the various kinds of a night are almost beyond belief. To the compiler
prepared as he was to behold amazing quantities, they exhibited far beyond
what he was led to expect; and to others who have seen their throngs, the
astonishment has been perhaps still greater. A punt-shooter of the name of
Bowles has been known to clear upwards of a hundred pounds in a season by his
gun. The wild-fowl were sold to the higglers, &c, at two shillings a couple,
one with the other. Allowing his expenses to be only thirty pounds, here were
2600 birds brought home—an immense destruction when the whole period allotted
to it does not much exceed five months. Forty-two Wigeons have been killed at a
single shot in the daytime, and the difficulty of approaching the great flocks of
fowl in the light is tenfold. A man, in whose punt the compiler was, got eighteen
Wigeons at one shot, and many that were crippled escaped. If in the day or at
night the punters get a shot at the fowl at feed upon the ooze, they tie on their
' plashes ' [which are] similar to the mud-pattens used in Hampshire, and collect
the spoil. * * * In the day, shooting upon the river below Goldhanger in Essex,
at half-ebb, very extensive oozes are dry, where grows a long grass upon which
the wild-fowl feed. The nicety required is so to place the punt in some of the
creeks which intersect these oozes as to intercept the birds, either in coming to
their feed when the tide recedes, or when it makes so as to cover the feeding
ground, and drive them from the spot. It is then the shooter has full employment
for an hour and a half or two hours, after which the fowl either get settled upon