278 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS 



hour. It was, of course, impossible on such occasion 

 to afford them the attention they deserved. Had a 

 couple of guns been placed in position, thirty or forty 

 pigeons might have been secured. On the morrow we 

 were otherwise engaged, and the weather had changed 

 to snow ; but on the following day, when we devoted 

 the afternoon to the pigeons, scarcely a dozen were to be 

 seen. The weather had reverted to mildness, there was 

 little or no wind, and climatic conditions were not 

 dissimilar from those which had prevailed forty-eight 

 hours before. Yet the venture resulted in almost total 

 failure, the very few pigeons which appeared coming in 

 far above gun-shot — up in the clouds. 



