CHAPTER VIII.

WILD-FOWL AND SEA-FOWL.

“A Flight of Fowl.”--Habit of Wounded Birds.--“Duck-Hunting.”--Swimming “like a Duck.”--Wild-fowling in Shakespeare’s Day.--“The Stalking-Horse.”--“The Caliver.”--“The Stale.”--Wild-Geese.--Sign of Hard Weather.--The Barnacle Goose.--Barnacles.--Wild Fowl.--Divers and Grebes.--The “Loon.”--The “Di-dapper.”--The Cormorant.--Its Voracity.--Fishing with Cormorants.--The King’s Cormorants.--Their “Keep” at Westminster.--Fishing at Thetford.--The Master of the Cormorants.--Entries in State Papers.--The Home of the Cormorant.--The Sea-side.--Shakespeare’s Sea-cliffs and “Sea-mells.”--Gulls and Gull-Catchers. 235