16 FIELD ORNITHOLOGY. 



shooting is to be had along the hedge rows, and in the rank herbage that fringes fences. It is 

 best to keep at a littki 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, 

 tw(j persons, one on each side, can together do more than twice as much work as one. Thick- 

 ets and tangled undergrowth are favorite 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 keep stiU a 

 few minutes in some favorable S})ot, 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 sucli shooting, wheu birds are mostly out of sight if a dozen 

 yards off. When yourseK concealed in a tliicket, and no birds appear, you can often call num- 

 bers 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, vaiiable 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 neighborhood, and sometimes puts certain birds almost beside themselves, 

 ]iarticularly in the brei^ding 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 pen- 

 etrating 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 

 bo 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 gi-aze 

 gradually up to geese, the gunner being hidden by its body. There is one trick worth know- 

 ing ; 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 step of direct approach. Numberless other 

 little arts will come to you as your wood-craft matures. 



Recovering Birds. — It is not always that you secure the birds you kill ; you may not 

 be able to find them, or you may see them lying, perhaps but a few feet off, in a spot practi- 

 cally inaccessible. Under such circumstances a retriever does excellent service, as already 

 hinted ; he is equally useful when a bird properly '■ marked down" is not found there, having 

 fluttered or run away and hidden elsewhere. The most difficult of all places to find birds is 

 among reeds, the eternal sameness of which makes it almost impossible to rediscover a spot 

 whence the eye has once wandered, while the peculiar growth allows birds to slip far down out 

 of sight. In rank grass or weeds, when you have walked up with your eye fixed on the spot 

 where the bird seemed to ftill, yet failed to discover it, drop your cap or handkerchief for a 

 mark, and hunt around it as a centre, in enlarging circles. In thickets, make a " bee line" 

 for the spot, if possible keeping your eye on the sjiray from which the bird fell, and not for- 

 getting where you stood on firing ; you may require to come back to the spot and take a new 

 departure. You will not seldom see a bird just shot at fly off as if unharmed, when really it 

 will drop dead in a few moments. In all cases therefore when the bird does not drop at the 

 shot, follow it with your eyes as far as you can ; if you see it finally drop, or even flutter 

 languidly downward, mark it on the principles just mentioned, and go in search. Make every 

 •endeavor to secure wounded birds, on the score of humanity ; they should not be left to pine 

 away and die in lingering misery if it can possibly be avoided. 



Killing Wounded Birds. — You will often recover winged birds, as full of life as before 

 the bone was broken ; and others too grievously hurt to fly, yet far from death. Your object is 



