44 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



best had not the same reHsh for him in that distant 

 country as at home, and he was accustomed to take 

 frequent and long hoHdays to have a month on the 

 moors and in the coverts and to go on shooting and 

 fishing excursions to the continent. Wild-fowling was 

 perhaps the kind of sport he loved best of all, and we 

 soon got on the subject of wild geese. 



That bird was much in my mind at the moment, for 

 I was just back from the east coast, where I had been 

 staying with the wild geese, so to speak, at Wells-next- 

 the-Sea, watching them every day in their great gather- 

 ings and listening to their multitudinous resounding 

 cries, which affect one like bells, "jangled, out of tune 

 and harsh" it may be, but the sense of wildness and 

 freedom the sound imparts is exceedingly grateful. 



Some of his adventures among the geese caused me 

 to remark that, even if I had not long ceased to be a 

 sportsman, I would never again lift a gun against a 

 wild goose; it was so intelligent a bird that it would 

 be like shooting at a human being. He had no such 

 feeling — could not understand it. If geese were more 

 intelligent than other species, that only made them the 

 better sporting birds, and the pleasure of circumventing 

 them was so much the greater. There was nothing bet- 

 ter to get the taste of shooting half-tame hand-fed 

 driven birds out of the mouth than a week or two after 

 wild geese. He had just had a fine time with them on 

 the coast of Norway. This reminded him of something. 

 Yes, the wild goose was about as intelligent a bird as 

 you could find. The friend he had been staying with 



