76 NATUEAL niSTOET SKETCHES. 



their varied call-notes ; the soft musical hoop of the 

 black swan, the sharp loud quack of the black duck, the 

 hoarse croak of the mountain-duck, the snort of the 

 shoveller, and the shrill call of the teal, are all familiar 

 to him ; and as he gathers up his dead birds, he hears the 

 ducks pitching again in various parts of the lagoon, 

 giving him promise of a goodly harvest by morning. 

 "When the dead birds are collected, the pipe is lit, the 

 gun charged, and he quietly settles himself down in his 

 rushy screen for another shot. The early part of the 

 evening is best for this sport ; the birds leave the feeding- 

 grounds about midnight, often go out to sea, if the lagoon 

 is on the coast, and return again a little before daybreak, 

 when they often pack on the bank of the lagoon. So in 

 punt-shooting, the evening and the morning shots are 

 those upon which the shooter principally depends. 

 "Where the birds are feeding well upon ground which has 

 been but little disturbed, flight-shooting is the best and 

 surest game of any with a shoulder-gun, and there is 

 some little difference between flight-shooting out here 

 and at home, where the shooter has to sit for hours, 

 often in sleet and drizzly rain, his teeth chattering and 

 his fingers so cold that he can scarcely pull the trigger. 

 Here a good pea-jacket will keep the shooter warm on 

 the coldest night, and though I have occasionally used 

 gloves, I never really wanted them. The best seasons 

 for flight-shooting are the autumn and early winter. In 

 the months of March and April, 1858, my old mate 

 killed upwards of a hundred couple of birds, princi- 



