24 FIELD ORNITHOLOGY part i 



precautions to be taken in shooting through high open forest ; you 

 have only to saunter along with your eyes in the tree-tops. It is 

 ordinarily the easiest and on the whole the most remunerative path 

 of the collector. In traversing fields and meadows move briskly, 

 your principal object being to flush birds out of the grass ; and as 

 most of your shots will be snap ones, keep in readiness for instant 

 action. Excellent and varied shooting is to be had along the 

 hedgerows, and in the rank herbage that fringes fences. It is best 

 to keep at a little distance, yet near enough to arouse all the 

 birds as you pass ; you may catch them on wing, or pick them off 

 just as they settle after a short flight. In this shooting, two 

 persons, one on each side, can together do more than twice as 

 much work as one. Thickets and tangled undergrowth are 

 favourite resorts of many birds ; but when very close, or, as often 

 happens, over miry ground, they are hard places to shoot in. As 

 you come thrashing through the brush, the little inhabitants are 

 scared into deeper recesses ; but if you keej) still a few minutes in 

 some favourable spot, they are reassured, and will often come back 

 to take a peep at you. A good deal of standing still will repay you 

 at such times ; needless to add, you cannot be too lightly loaded for 

 such shooting, when birds are mostly out of sight if a dozen yards 

 off. When yourself concealed in a thicket, and no birds appear, 

 you can often call numbers about you by a simple artifice. Apply 

 the back of your hand to your slightly parted lips, and suck in air; 

 it makes a nondescript screeping noise, variable in intonation at 

 your whim, and some of the sounds resemble the cries of a wounded 

 bird, or a young one in distress. It wakes up the whole neigh- 

 bourhood, and sometimes puts certain birds almost beside them- 

 selves, particularly in the breeding season. Torturing a wounded 

 bird to make it scream in agony accomplishes the same result, but 

 of course is only permissible under great exigency. In penetrating 

 swamps and marshes, the best advice I can give you is to tell you 

 to get along the best way you can. Shooting on perfectly open 

 ground offers much the same case ; you must be left to your own 

 devices. I will say, however, you can ride on horseback, or even 

 in a buggy, nearer birds than they will allow you to walk up to 

 them. Sportsmen take advantage of this to get within a shot of 

 the upland plover, usually a very wary bird in populous districts ; 

 I have driven right into a flock of wild geese ; in California they 

 often train a bullock to graze gradually up to geese, the gunner 

 being hidden by its body. There is one trick worth knowing ; it 

 is not to let a bird that has seen you know by your action that 

 you have seen it, but to keep on unconcernedly, gradually sidling 

 nearer. I have secured many hawks in this way, when the bird 

 would have flown off at the first stej) of direct approach. Number- 



