2i8 
WILD WINGS 
time, some of them containing as many as seventy-five birds. 
Meantime I am shooting at them as they pass, with my re- 
fiex camera, despite the dull light. As may be imagined, the 
company on the sand has become immense, covering many 
acres. They keep up a sort of murmuring noise, and now and 
then all fly up, with a perfect storm and tumult of wings and 
voices, soon to alight again. Even after dark they are yet 
arriving, as one may hear. I hazard the guess that there are 
often ten thousand curlews at such a roost each night. At the 
first glimmer of day they are off again for the marshes. It is 
very important that every Southern State should prohibit the 
spring shooting of shore-birds. Unless they do so, in a few 
years these species will surely be exterminated, at the recent, 
and even present, rate of wholesale slaughter. It is simply 
wicked, as well as short-sighted, to kill them at this time, when 
they are about to breed. 
Despite all the camera-hunting of the day, it is notable that 
there have been almost no shore-bird photographs in exist¬ 
ence. The reason is that the task is almost prohibitive. Shore- 
birds are timid, cjuick in their motions; they live in the open, 
and are so small — most of them — that, unless one can get 
very near indeed, the picture will amount to but little. I have 
spent whole days in blinds with decovs, or with the camera 
focused on the water’s edge, vainlv waiting for a single one 
of the provoking birds to come within proper range. Occa¬ 
sionally I have thus secured a single picture. Little by little, 
in the course of years, through taking advantage of every 
opportunity, my series of shore-bird pictures has been slowly 
growing, and once I improved the chance of a lifetime. 
It was in my cruise among the Florida Keys when I left 
the party who were to return in the schooner to Miami, and 
Warden Bradley and I started on the fifty-mile beat to wind¬ 
ward in a centre-board skiff back to our headquarters. The 
