112 GAME-BIRDS AT HOME. 



fairly well, especially the teal, wood-ducks, and 

 blue-bills. Sometimes during the middle of the 

 day, when the birds were flying too high for 

 good pass shooting, we pulled the boat into a 

 blind of reeds or willows and set out some de- 

 coys. It was a nice way to wile away the mid- 

 dle of the day and eat a lunch in comfort, for 

 there was rarely danger of being too violently 

 interrupted, most of the ducks ignoring decoys 

 at this season. But often a bite that would 

 otherwise have reached the crust of a piece of 

 pie, so as to leave nothing more necessary for 

 the next bite than doubling the two remaining 

 triangles together, had its bud of promise rudely 

 nipped by the sudden hiss of descending wings, 

 when all the sky seemed clear around us. And 

 again a promising scratch of a match was blighted 

 and the pipe dropped in the bottom of the boat 

 because of a regiment of ducks swinging around 

 the bend on silent wing and almost touching the 

 water about the decoys before we saw them. 

 Sometimes when we were unusually busy with 

 the lunch, or dozing afterward, with sky serene 

 and nothing moving, a sudden splash among the 

 decoys would make us jump for our guns, which 



