Poachers and Poaching

by F.L.S. John Watson

The capture of either poachers or their nets is often difficult to accomplish. The former wind their sinuous way, snake-like, through the wet meadows in approaching the rivers, and their nets are rarely kept at home. These they secrete about farm buildings, in dry ditches, or among the bushes in close proximity to their poaching grounds. Were they kept at home the obtaining of a search warrant by the police or local angling association would always render their custody a critical one. They are sometimes kept in the poachers' houses, though only for a short period when about to be used. At this time the police have found them secreted in the chimney, between the bed and the mattress, or even wound about the portly persons of the poachers' wives. The women are not always simply aiders and abettors, but in poaching, sometimes play a more important rôle. They have frequently been taken red-handed by the watchers. The vocation of these latter is a hard one. They work at night, and require to be most on the alert during rough and wet weather—in the winter, when the fish are spawning. Sometimes they must remain still for hours in freezing clothes; and even in summer they not unfrequently lie all night in dank and wet herbage. They see the night side of nature, and many of them are fairly good naturalists. If a lapwing gets up and screams in the darkness they know how to interpret the sound, as also a hare rushing wildly past. It must be confessed, however, that at all points the fish poacher is cleverer and of readier wit than the river watcher.

CHAPTER X.
WILD DUCKS AND DUCK DECOYING.

There is no European country, however fortunately situated, which has so many species of wild-fowl as Britain. This is partly owing to its insular position, and partly to the food-abounding seas which are on every coast. In their primitive condition these islands must have constituted a very paradise for wild-fowl, and we know that the marsh and fen lands of the south-eastern counties were breeding haunts of myriads of fowl not more than two centuries ago. Even now there are nearly thirty species of wild duck which are either resident or annual visitants to our marine and inland waters. Nearly half of these are now known to have bred within the British Isles, the remaining ones coming from the north only at the severity of winter.

Wild ducks divide themselves into two natural groups according to habit and the manner in which they obtain their food. Sportsmen and fowlers refer to those divisions as "surface" and "diving" ducks. Those which comprise the first class feed exclusively upon the surface and inhabit fresh water; the latter are mostly marine forms, and in procuring their food the whole body is submerged. Among the surface-feeding ducks are the shoveller, sheldrake, mallard, pintail, gadwall, garganey, widgeon, and teal; whilst the latter include the tufted duck, scaup, scoter, surf scoter, velvet scoter, pochard, and golden-eye. Other British ducks which would come naturally into one or other of these groups, but are more or less rare, are the eiders, American widgeon, red-crested pochard, smew, the mergansers, and the buffel-headed, long-tailed, ruddy sheld, Steller's western, ferruginous, and harlequin ducks.

From the fact of their resorting to inland waters the surface-feeding ducks are perhaps the best known. All of them are shy, wary birds, and as difficult of approach as to bring down. Nearly all the species which inhabit fresh water feed during the night, and fly off to the hills to rest and sleep during the day. All of them are birds of considerable powers of flight, and an interesting fact in their economy is the power of the males to change their summer plumage so as to resemble that of the females. As this adaptation only takes place during the breeding season it is probably done for protective reasons.

The common mallard or wild duck, and the teal, being resident breeding birds, are the first to become noticeable in winter, and many thousands are annually taken in the few remaining decoys of this country. The mallard is an exceedingly handsome bird, and one of the largest of its kind. It is an early breeder, and soon after the brown duck begins to sit the male moults the whole of its flight feathers. So sudden and simultaneous is this process that for six weeks in summer the usually handsome drake is quite incapable of flight; and it is probably at this period of its ground existence that the assumption of the duck's plumage is such an aid to protection. The mallard is not strictly a ground builder, as its nest is sometimes at a considerable altitude, nests of a rook and a hawk having been taken advantage of. In such case the young birds are probably brought to the ground in the bill of the old one. To such an extent did the mallard at one time breed among the fens in this country, that it was customary before the young could fly for a number of persons to engage in what was termed a "driving of ducks," when as many as one thousand eight hundred birds have been taken. Although wild and wary under ordinary circumstances, the mallard upon occasion has shown remarkable tameness. In severe weather two hundred birds have assembled upon a pond and accepted oats at not more than an arm's length from the feeder. Under ordinary circumstances the common wild duck feeds upon floating grasses, grain, insects, and worms; a well-grown mallard sometimes weighs three pounds.

The teal is the smallest of the wild ducks, and is an exquisitely-formed and prettily-marked species. It is dear to the fowler as the gourmet, for it is easily decoyed or stalked, and when procured affords delicate eating. Many a time does the heart of the shore-shooter warm as he hears the whistle of a bunch of teal, and sees them drop down like a plummet. They love to haunt the margins of fresh-water streams and lakes, and when put away from these rise rapidly and as though they had been shot from the water. It is only when their inland resorts are hard frozen that they are driven to the sea, and once here every art of the fowler is used in coming up with them. As many as eighty-five and upon another occasion one hundred and six teal have been picked up after a well-directed shot from a punt-gun—the former by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey, the latter off the Irish coast. Both shots were at flying birds. The teal is an early breeder, and being resident is among the first of the ducks seen on the decoys, and with the mallard is the species most abundantly taken. It is liable to the same sexual change in the breeding season, and during the time it has young is most affectionate in tending them. An anecdote is related of how a country lad having fallen in with a brood of teal drove them before him to a lodge. The mother teal followed after, keeping close at hand. When the boy had driven them into a little shed within the yard, the old bird, still following, ran in after them, and in spite of there being dogs and men about did not betray the least alarm.

The sheldrake is one of the largest and handsomest of its kind, and although rare as a resident bird, I have frequently found its nest in rabbit burrows on the shores of Morecambe Bay. It is at all times one of the most distinctive of the ducks with its bright and well-defined chestnut and white plumage. The head and neck are black, but this glows with an iridescent green. Naturalists do not consider this a true duck, but from structural modifications as a connecting link between the ducks and geese. It usually breeds on a plateau commanding the sea, and when approaching its nest it plumps right down to the mouth of the hole. Its creamy white eggs are large and round, eight to twelve being usually found in the burrow. For a day or so after the young are hatched they are kept underground, and immediately upon emerging are led down to the tide. I have not unfrequently taken the eggs from the sand-hills and hatched them under hens—a quite successful experiment up to a certain point. The young seem to be able to smell salt water, and will cover miles of land to gain it. If, however, the distance prove impracticable they will surely leave in autumn when the migratory impulse is strong upon them. This instinct is particularly marked in all sea-fowl, and wild swans, geese, and ducks call loudly to their farm cousins as they pass over. There is a great wildness about the clangour and cries of migratory fowl, coming as it does far up in the wintry sky. Reverting to the breeding of the shelduck, the parents have been observed conveying the newly-hatched young to the sea on their backs when the nest has been far inland. In Holland recesses are cut in the dunes and sand-hills so as to encourage the birds to breed, and each morning the nests are visited and the eggs collected. Ordinarily not more than a dozen eggs are laid, but under this system as many as thirty are produced by a single duck. After the 18th of June the persecution ceases and the birds are allowed to hatch in peace. Most of the nests are lined with fine down little inferior in quality to that of the eiders, this too becoming a commercial commodity.

Being driven from their bleak northern haunts by the ice, widgeon appear in immense flocks in winter, and are by far the commonest of the migratory ducks. They first begin to arrive about October, and continue coming until the end of the year. Although found upon inland lochs and rivers, they love to frequent weed or grass-grown ooze and mud-banks, where they sleep and feed. The widgeon is an exception to most of the wild ducks, as it feeds more by day than by night, and, like geese, it is particularly fond of nibbling the short grass on the saltings. It has a wild whistle which resembles the syllable "whew"—by which name the bird is known on many parts of the coast. Sometimes during a lull in a spell of rough weather vast flocks concentrate themselves on the ooze, and it is at this time they are sought by the puntsman or fowler. When good shots have been obtained at such masses of birds over a hundred have been killed at a single shot, and this explains why widgeon are sold so cheaply in the markets. When winter breaks up the flocks retire northward, only a few remaining to breed on the northern parts of Britain. The widgeon is not known to have nested in England.