Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/434

 in the Dowsby Fen, and four in the Sempringham Fen probably made by the Gilbertines.

The decoy was a piece of water quite hidden by trees, and only to be approached by a plank across the moat which surrounded it, and with a large tract of marshy uncultivated ground extending all round it, the absence of disturbing noises being an essential, for the birds slept there during the day and only took their flight to the coast at evening for feeding. The method of taking them was as follows. The pond had half-a-dozen arms like a star-fish, but all curving to the right, over which nets were arched on bent rods; and these pipes, leading down each in a different direction and gradually narrowing, ended in a purse of netting. All along the pipes were screens, so set that the ducks could not see the man till they had passed him, and lest they should wind him he always held a bit of burning turf before his mouth. Decoy birds enticed by hemp and other floating seed flung to them over the screens kept swimming up the pipes followed by the wild birds, and a little dog was trained to enter the water and pass in and out of the reed screens. The ducks, being curious, would swim up, and the dog, who was rewarded with little bits of cheese, kept reappearing ahead of them, and so led them on to follow the decoys. At last the man showed himself, and the birds—ducks, teal, and widgeon—rushed up the pipe into the purse and were taken. The decoy was only used in November, December, and January, and it is not in use now at all. But there are still two of the woods left round the ponds at Friskney, each about twelve acres, and the water is there to some extent, but the arms are grown over with weeds and are barely traceable. Indeed it is a hundred years and rather more since the famous old decoy man, George Skelton, lived and worked here with his four sons. His great grandson was the last to follow the occupation, but when the numbers caught came to be only three and four a day, it was clear that the business had "given out." Absolute quiet and freedom from all the little noises which arise wherever the lowliest and smallest of human habitations exist was necessary, for at least a mile all round the wood, and as cultivation spread this could not be obtained. Nothing is so shy as wild-fowl; and Skelton said that even the smell of a saucepan of burnt milk would scare all the duck away. The mode of taking birds in "flight nets" is still