Shore-bird Shooting 315 



spring holes marked with green fresh grass are 

 the nooks that bear his evidence. Often in these 

 patches we come on companies of five or six, or 

 perhaps they are well scattered on the dry marsh, 

 and, under such circumstances, wild. In all events, 

 hunt them down wind and allow no advantages 

 to the twisting flight. With a startled " scaipe " 

 a snipe rises close in front, and the gunner of 

 experience either nails it on the second or lets it 

 twist a bit and straighten out, and when the bird 

 falls, marks close the spot, for with back upward 

 a snipe is hard to see. 



With approaching evening they become active, 

 and the " scaipe " of a restless bird looking for a 

 spot to " bore " in peace is one of the dusk sounds 

 of the marsh. 



THE SHORE-BIRDS 



To all the inhabitants of the earth the shore- 

 birds are familiar; for from the dreary wastes of 

 Grinnell Land, and the solitude of Kerguelen, 

 to the steaming jungles of Brazil and the arid 

 plains of the Sahara, in the coral islets of ocean 

 and far up the snow-capped mountains, hardly a 

 spot can be found that some one of these birds 

 has not visited. Of the more than two hundred 

 and fifty species in the order, about seventy have 

 been found in North America. While the breed- 

 ing home of many species is in the far North, — 



