DECOYS AND WILD-FOWLING IN ESSEX.
51
it from Suffolk, is the estuary of the Stour, with also some decoys on its banks—
a sheet of water but one-third less in size than that of the Blackwater. In the
southern part of Essex, between the Blackwater and the mouth of the Thames, the
estuary of the River Crouch, with its many arms and backwaters, afforded protec-
tion and food to the wild-fowl * * * . The fowl taken in the Essex decoys were
—and, indeed, are—chiefly Wigeon, as they are lured to their capture from the
sea-coast, whereon these birds always predominate among the duck tribe. For
this reason, there are no decoys in Essex distant from the sea, as is the case in
several of our other Eastern counties, wherein large meres and fens existed * * *
and in which Duck, Mallard, and Teal were abundant, and therefore usually taken
in the decoys."
Sir Ralph quotes a case, known as " Carrington v. Taylor, 11 East
571. 2 Camp. 258," in which, in 1810, a wild-fowl shooter was sum-
moned by the owner of the decoy at Beaumont-cum-Moze for shoot-
ing ducks on a creek near the decoy, although he did not come
within 200 yards of it. The Court held that the decoy was protected
by law, and the verdict was for the plaintiff.*
For general information as to the construction and mode of
working a decoy, the reader must refer to Mr. E. C. Walcott's Guide
to the Coasts of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk (p. 68), to Pennant's
British Zoology (vol. ii, p. 595), to Sir Ralph Payne Gallwey's enter-
taining Book of Duck Decoys (49) and to Mr. Harting's paper on
"Wild-Fowl Decoys in Essex" in the Essex Naturalist for 1888
(50. ii. 159). Such information scarcely falls within the scope of a
local work like the present; but apology is hardly necessary for
reprinting from the pages of the Field (29. Feb. 15, 1868) the
following interesting article, which gives a detailed and graphic
description of one of our chief Essex decoys—-that at Marsh House,
Tillingham, described hereafter—as well as of the mode of working
it and decoys in general.† The accompanying cuts, too, will give
the uninitiated a very good idea of the general appearance of a
decoy.
DECOY Ponds.—The following particulars * * * are derived more especially
from a well-known pond near Tillingham, on the coast of Essex, which the
writer has lately, through the kindness of the owners, had the good fortune of
visiting, and where he witnessed during several days, at the most favourable time
of the year, the operations of catching carried on with great success. To those
gentlemen, and to their skilful and obliging decoyman—one of that 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 tender his best thanks
* Daniel (6. Suppt. 431) also cites a case in which a decoy-owner sued a gunner for shooting
within 100 yards of his decoy, and thus frightening the birds, and he won the day.
† Mr. Fitch has ascertained that this article, which is simply signed "P." was written by Mr.
Jacob L. Pattisson, private secretary to the Rt. Hon. W. H. Smith. Some of his statements
were attacked in the following numbers of the Field (pp. 183, 235, and 245) by Admiral Hickley
writing under the nom-de-plume of "Decoy Duck," but he was able successfully to hold his own
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