HISTORY OF DECOYS-(continued.) |
CHAPTER VI. |
DECOYS IN THE COUNTY OF ESSEX. |
| THOUGH this county never possessed any fens or meres, like Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincoln, Cambridge, Huntingdon or Northampton, still, owing to its extensive sea-coast and numerous tidal estuaries, it contains many disused Decoys. Essex, indeed, rivals Lincoln and Norfolk in this respect. As may be expected, the Essex Decoys were chiefly placed near the banks of the great estuary of the River Blackwater. This sheet of water is some dozen miles in length and two miles in width,-with its shores, and outside its mouth, flanked for miles at low water with fine feeding-grounds, in the shape of beds of ooze to attract and support wildfowl. Round the estuary of the Blackwater at least fourteen or more flourishing Decoys existed. To the north of the Blackwater, the Hamford Water estuary, with its multitudinous creeks, small islands, and channels had, as might be expected, attendant Decoys. Still further north, on the border of the county, and dividing 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 Black-water. 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 protection and food to the wildfowl that frequented the coast of Essex and its mud-flats. 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 to attract wildfowl, and in which Duck, Mallard, and Teal were abundant, and therefore usually taken in the Decoys. |
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