GOLDEN PLOVER 271 



shoove of reed. They will often be decoyed within shot 

 by this simple stratagem. 



I should think many of them could be caught in a flight- 

 net at dusk, for that is their favourite flighting hour. For 

 though they whizz past at lightning speed, they generally 

 fly three or four yards above the stuff. Indeed, in hilly, 

 uneven countries, hundreds kill themselves against telegraph 

 wires. 



When they flight by day, generally from north to south, 

 or the reverse, they keep going in small bunches all day, 

 and a knowing gunner gets in their line of flight and kills 

 many. 



In autumn or early spring they frequent newly-planted 

 wheat-fields, or fields whence wheat has been harvested ; nor 

 are they easy to be detected in such a place. With the first 

 fall of snow in the marshlands they take to the uplands; 

 and if the snow continue, they disappear from the district, 

 generally going south. 



In April they change their plumage, and do not look like 

 the same birds as 3^ou see them walking about the ploughed 

 lands with their black mails. But in Ma}' they have gone 

 from the Broadland — gone to nest elsewhere and bring up 

 their young, to return again with the October gales, and 

 reappear on toast amid the chrysanthemums. 



