32 SUGGESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS FOR FIELD-WORK. 



to keep at a little distance, yet near enough to arouse all the 

 birds as you pass : you may catch them on wing, or pick them 

 off just as they settle after a short flight. In this shooting, two 

 persons, one on each side, can together do more than twice as 

 much work as one. Thickets and tangled undergrowth are 

 favorite resorts of many birds ; but when very close, or, as 

 often happens, over miry ground, they are hard places to shoot 

 in. As you come thrashing through the brush, the little inhab- 

 itants are scared into deeper recesses ; but if you keep still a 

 few minutes in some favorable spot, they are reassured, and 

 will often come back to take a peep at you. A good deal of 

 standing still will repay you at such times ; needless to add, 

 you cannot be too lightly loaded for such shooting, when birds 

 are mostly, out of sight if a dozen yards off. When yourself 

 concealed in a thicket, and no birds appear, you can often call 

 numbers about you by a simple artifice. Apply the back of your 

 hand to your slightly parted lips, and suck in air ; it makes a 

 nondescript "screeping" noise, variable in intonation at your 

 whim, and some of the sounds resemble the cries of a wounded 

 bird, or a young one in distress. It wakes up the whole neigh- 

 borhood, and sometimes puts cerlaiti birds almost beside them- 

 selves, particularly in the breeding season. Torturing a 

 wounded bird to make it scream in agony accomplishes the 

 same result, but of course is only permissible under great exi- 

 gency. In penetrating swamps and marshes, the best advice 

 I can give you is to tell you to get along the best way you can. 

 Shooting on perfectly open ground offers much the same case ; 

 you must be left to your own devices. I will say. however, you 

 can ride on* horseback, or even in a buggy, nearer birds than 

 they will allow you to walk up to them. Sportsmen take advan- 

 tage of this to get within a shot of the upland plover, usually a 

 very wary bird in populous districts ; I have driven right into 

 a flock of wild geese ; in California they often train a bullock to 

 graze gradually up to geese, the gunner being hidden by its 

 body. There is one trick worth knowing ; it is not to let a bird 

 that has seen you know by your action that you have seen it, 

 but to keep on unconcernedly, gradually sidling nearer. I have 



