THE BUSHES. 59 
A word on the subject of indiscriminate slaughter. Quite apart from 
the cruelty, very little comes of it. A shooter who takes the trouble to 
notice the common birds carefully will, in nine cases out of ten (the tenth 
being the Robin), spot the rarity as different if he comes upon it. It was 
so at all events in the case of the Icterine which I had the good luck to 
secure on September 5th, 1899. At the end of a long and unsuccessful 
day’s shooting in the estuary, I turned aside from the homeward track 
towards the bushes, already worked through in the morning, as a last 
chance of picking up something rare. They had just been thrashed out by 
another collector, and I myself had seen nothing in them before; but no 
matter, I knew that went for little. I would just try one favourite beat, 
“the first sandhill bushes,” a bare one hundred yards of the tallest scrub. 
Before I had traversed ten of them, out popped a Warbler, and, little as 
the Icterine differs from the Willow Wren, I guessed at once what it was. 
The shape was different, and though the back view and wings with their 
light-coloured tertiaries were suggestive in a way of an immature Pied 
Flycatcher, I had caught a glimpse of the yellow breast, and eagerly 
hastened in pursuit. From over-excitement I missed more than once, but 
at length getting in a clear shot as it darted for a moment across the 
sand, I rushed up, and shortly afterwards experienced the most delightful 
of all sensations as I gazed on the large tell-tale beak of a genuine 
Hypolais icterina. 
Kind indeed has fortune been to me since that eventful day. On 
September 13th, 1904, I was shooting the bushes with my brother, G. F. The 
whole place swarmed with Linnets, and, remembering that it was out of a flock 
of Linnets that Dr. Power got his Ortolan, I remarked jokingly to a rival 
shooter, as I passed him, that I was going out to get an Ortolan. A 
quarter of a mile on, up got a lightish bird, which I momentarily took to 
be a Lark. By the time it was out of range its flight and more mellow 
note had told me that it was something else, and I rushed round the sand- 
hills to get another look at it. Here my brother joined me, and we put the 
bird up and missed it. It was now quite clear that it was a stranger, and, 
though it rose wild the next time, I just got in a shot, and secured thereby 
fame as a prophet—and, what pleased me more, an Ortolan! It lacked the 
beautiful plumage of the adult male, but had nevertheless a fine flush of 
chestnut on the flanks. It was a bird that one might easily have passed 
over owing to its insignificant appearance on the wing; its flight was swift 
and low, not heavy like that of the Corn-Bunting or Yellowhammer; it 
reminded me rather of the flight of a Garden-Warbler. 
