CONTRASTS IN WILDFOWLING 425 



moreover, the latter are not usually found in harbour by 

 day. They, together with the wigeon, to the number of 

 perhaps a couple of thousand, spent that day in their 

 accustomed resort, a secluded bay a mile or two along 

 the coast, and did not approach their feeding-grounds 

 tiil after dark. Redshanks were frequently feeding 

 within ten yards, up to their breast-feathers in water, and 

 a pretty sight it was to watch the impetuous manner they 

 tossed aside the floating weed to find some food which it 

 concealed. Oystercatchers and other waders were also 

 extremely tame, and for the first time since January 1881, 

 I noticed great numbers of golden plovers out on the salt- 

 slakes. On one occasion I approached a long thin line 

 of knots on the mud-edge, all asleep, no heads in sight, 

 and looking for all the world like a strip of rounded blue 

 pebbles, except that they were raised a couple of inches 

 off the mud. As these birds do not breed in the British 

 Islands (nor in Europe for that matter), and neither they 

 nor the geese are included in the Wildfowl Act, I sent 

 a charge from the cripple-gun athwart their line and secured 

 eight of them. 



On the evening of the last day a catastrophe occurred. 

 It was full tide, and just before dusk an immense body of 

 geese were feeding in towards the shore. We crept close 

 along the banks under the ice-edge ; the geese drove in 

 with the tide, and in a few minutes we were, so to speak, 

 in the midst of them. The water was of deepest blue, 

 and, in the bright rays of the setting sun, it fairly 

 shone with glossy black necks and snow-white sterns. 

 But the big gun missed fire. Had she "gone," 

 I must have killed geese from forty yards up to one 

 hundred. So near were some geese that there was time 

 to pull out the double- 10 from under the fore-deck, and 



