BIRDS to the increase of the number of gunners and the use of steam-yachts, that their numbers are reduced greatly and such ' shoots ' as those mentioned above occur only in the severest weather, as in January, 1891, when a number of gunners (how many not stated) secured nearly 300 birds by a single joint discharge of their guns in the Blackwater estuary, which was then filled with ice. Further information on this subject must be sought in the chapter on wildfowling. Thus the surface of the county is considerably diversified, though it lacks entirely those tracts of mountain and wide open moorland which add so much to the richness of the avi-fauna of some more northerly counties. Large inland sheets of fresh water are also entirely lacking ; but there are not a few smaller sheets of ornamental water, chiefly arti- ficial, in parks and pleasure grounds. The largest are those in Wanstead, Gosfield, and Debden Parks. Allusion must be made here to the existence of wildfowl decoys. The large number of which traces may yet be found proves that decoy- ing was once an important industry in the county, and old records tell of the immense numbers of wildfowl formerly taken. A large amount of information on this subject is given in the present writer's work, the Birds of Essex (1890), pp. 4771. In all there are, or have been, in the county some thirty-five decoys, of which only two are now worked regularly. Of these thirty-five, all but two are situated close to the coast in most cases actually on the marshes. The two southern- most lie in the parishes of Paglesham and Southminster. Around the shores of the large Blackwater Estuary there are no fewer than twenty (ten on each side), lying chiefly in the parishes of Tillingham (two both still used), Bradwell (two), Steeple, Mayland, Latchingdon, Gold- hanger (four), Tolleshunt D'Arcy (several one still used occasionally), and West Mersea. At Kirby-le-Soken there is one. Around the shores of the Colne Estuary are two decoys ; around those of Hamford Water four ; and on the southern (or Essex) side of the estuary of the Stour four. The remaining two Essex decoys are those already mentioned as being situated inland one (nine acres in extent) beside the river Stour at Wormingford : the other still further inland, between Pond Park Farm and the site of Leighs Priory at Little Leighs, almost in the centre of the county. 1 The only decoys now worked regularly are the Grange and Marsh House decoys, which lie within a mile or so of one another in Tillingham parish. Their annual ' catches ' of fowl have of course fallen off enormously of late, but are still large enough to pay the expenses of working. Fuller information on this subject must be sought, however, in the chapter on wildfowling. Essex has been in the past the home of a considerable number of good working ornithologists, who have left us, either in the pages of the natural history journals or among their private papers, many records of 1 Since the foregoing was written, I have heard of, but not definitely established, the existence of another decoy (the thirty-sixth) at Fobbing. This is the only decoy I ever heard of in Essex anywhere on the banks of the Thames. 235
