BAY-SNIPE AND OTHER WILD FOWL SHOOTING. 19 



passed several seasons there on the main opposite Cobb' s 

 Island, where we found the bay -snipe shooting most excel- 

 lent, especially for the big siche-bill curlews. On those 

 "broad waters," during the summer months, numerous 

 tree-blinds are planted in the water by the fowlers, and 

 between these they hide themselves and boats until the 

 brant arrive, late in the season. These blinds are formed 

 of small cedar-trees, stuck into the soft mud of the bot- 

 tom, and make with their bushy tops a thick screen 

 some five feet above the water. Numerous decoys are 

 anchored all around these blinds; the gunners take posi- 

 tion in the boats, the hovering flocks approach the snare, 

 the guns explode, and the surface is overspread with the 

 slain. These are quickly gathered up, the guns reloaded, 

 and all is ready for another flock. The victims are easily 

 disabled, and you are sure to retrieve with your boat all 

 that you shoot down. The black duck (Anas obscurd) also 

 is abundant at those places, as indeed it is along the 

 whole coast from Montauk to Hatteras. Though it fre- 

 quents salt bays and inlets, it seems also to be fond of 

 fresh waters, and is found in swamps, marshes, ice-fields, 

 and the margins of rivers. Though called the black 

 duck, that is a misnomer; for the black duck of science 

 is the spectacle -duck, a species of coot (Fuligula perspi- 

 culata), and is properly the dusky duck. We have 

 enjoyed much better bay-snipe shooting on the eastern 

 peninsula of Virginia than on Long Island, New 

 Jersey, or North Carolina. The scenery on the Chesa- 

 peake Bay side is very lovely, and we have never seen 

 more picturesque spots than the old plantation sites 

 along the bay shore; there green slopes dip down into the 

 crystal -clear water; noble trees droop their greenery of 

 foliage, engarlanded with the trailing vines of wild grape, 

 woodbine, ivy, and the splendid trumpet-flower. Broad 

 plantations outstretch for miles their fruitful acres of 



