The second favouring circumstance arises from a difference in habit between ducks in Spain and their relatives (even con-specific) inhabiting British waters. For whereas the latter, as a rule, will remain quiescent in their selected resting-places the livelong day, in Spain, on the contrary, by about 11 A.M., the force of hunger begins visibly to operate--not in all, but in sections, which, rising in detachments, separate themselves from the masses and commence exploratory cruises among the smaller and shallower _lucios_ where food may be found.[20] This intermittent flight slackens off for an hour or so at midday, is renewed in the afternoon, and stops dead one hour before sun-down. To exploit the advantage offered by these habits it is necessary to ascertain to which of the innumerable minor _lucios_ these "hunger-marchers" are resorting. Observation will have decided that point, and our expert gunner now (at 11 A.M.) be concealed with scrupulous care, and his fleet of, say, fifty decoys set out in lifelike and (or) attractive attitudes, exactly in the centre of the particular lagoon, whither, of recent days, the ducks have been observed to resort in greatest abundance from noon onwards. The gunner lies expectant on the cut rushes which strew the bottom-boards of his _cajon_--a box-shaped punt some 7 feet long by 2-1/2 broad, which is concealed by being thrust bodily in the midst of the biggest samphire bush available. The craft nevertheless is still afloat and, though flat-bottomed, is yet terribly crank, and any sudden movement to port or starboard threatens to capsize the entire outfit. To allay the tense suspicion of flighting wildfowl, several of the adjacent bushes for fifty yards around have been heightened by the addition of a cut bough or two--the idea being to induce a theory among passing ducks merely that this particular spot seems peculiarly favourable to samphire-growth--that and nothing more. In setting up decoys, while many are posed in lifelike attitudes, it is advisable to hang a few (especially white-plumaged species, such as pintail, shoveler, and wigeon-drakes) in almost vertical positions, in order to induce a belief among hungry incomers that these birds are "turning-up" to feast on abundant subaquatic plants beneath. This intermittent flight is naturally irregular, hunger affecting greater or less numbers on different days; but when it comes off in force affords the cream of wildfowling from before noon till the sun droops in the west. During the last hour before he dips not a wing moves. Duck-shooting thus resolves itself into two main systems: (1) intercepting the fowl on flight at dawn, and later (2) awaiting their incoming at expected points.