LOST OPPORTUNITIES: 125 
a futile effort to drive it over the gun. The bird then made for the sea-shore 
proper, and alighted on a shingle bank. In following it thither my brother 
met me, and I also took up the pursuit. From his account I did not think 
there was much chance of getting within range. This, however, we nearly 
achieved, and had I not been foolish enough to stop and turn my glasses on 
to it, I shall always think we should just have got a reasonable shot. As 
it was, the bird rose directly we resumed our advance, and I only got in a 
long hurried shot with the left barrel; and that was the last that I personally 
saw of the Sociable. It was facing me, as I looked through the glasses, with 
its cheek turned, and it had a Plover’s head, with a conspicuous light stripe 
above the eye; it might have been from this view a huge immature Dotterel. 
On the wing it appeared somewhere about the size of a Lapwing, with very 
black and white wings. 
On the following day my brother re-established communications with the 
stranger on the sands; it ran straight for the highest sand-hill, and scuttled 
up to the top. Needless to say, he got no shot there; it again did some 
soaring. Seeing that the bird had so well gauged the range of a twelve-bore, 
we hoped to outwit it on the next day by taking out a double-barrel eight, but, 
though we dragged this weighty piece of ordnance about for the best part of 
fifteen miles, we never got a glimpse of the Sociable, which for us was hence- 
forth a lost bird. As we afterwards discovered, other shooters had seen our 
bird, and had been equally struck with it. One couple, so they said, put it 
out of a furze-bush on a sheep-walk, but from what I know of the said sheep- 
walk I suspect it was only amongst some scattered furze-bushes, not in one. 
I have seen Golden Plover amongst them at other times. The one had 
judged it to be a Little Bustard, which was reasonable; the other proclaimed 
it a Bittern, which was absurd. What Bittern would stroll about on an open 
sandy plain, or disport itself on shingle, in broad daylight? I can vouch for 
its not being a Thick-knee, a bird I know well; so if it wasn’t a Sociable, what 
was it? Someone suggested a Courser, but I saw it well enough to be sure 
that there was no black streak near the eye, and the only other tenable 
suggestion was an Isabelline Lapwing. If so, it had made away with its 
crest, and was apparently ostracized by its own genus, for there were no 
other Lapwings about. 
So much for the Sociable Plover. A few days later, in the same locality, 
I added another good bird to’ my list of derelict rarities. This was a 
Harrier, probably a female Montagu. I was enjoying a frugal lunch with 
a friend in a moist depression on the marsh, when far off, but straight in 
front of us, I spied the long peaked wings and the short neck of a large 
