244 SUMMER 



are now protected in the United States during nine months 

 of the year; and each day has its periods of truce. You 

 may not shoot the birds before dawn or after sunset. By 

 this means the sport we know as ' flighting ' is abjured. 

 Since sport is and will be, and perhaps ought to be, it is 

 difficult with logic to say much against ' flighting,' which is a 

 poor man's sport. It takes its votaries to wild places, and it 

 can only be practised with success by those who study the 

 habits of birds as well as the swing of the gun. It needs a 

 good eye and a shrewd sense of nature. But the ' flighting' of 

 duck and birds of their sort is a daily migration to and from 

 feeding-grounds and sleeping-grounds ; and on this head is 

 open to the protests made by those fine naturalists and 

 sportsmen, Mr. Millais and Mr. Selous, against the shooting 

 of caribou in Newfoundland. The sportsmen, so-called, 

 sat on the line of migration and shot unhunted animals in 

 cold blood. Such killing is not of a sportsman's sort. The 

 evil of ' flighting ' is that it interferes with the instinct of the 

 bird and its scheme of life ; and because it does this, it drives 

 the birds from their native haunts, if frequently indulged. 

 Yet there are strange wild places even in England where 

 some sort of ' flighting ' is a real sport. Even as early as 

 August you may feel that the real hunting time has come 

 if you stand some evening with a gun behind any slight 

 obstruction on one of the South Welsh marshy moors. The 

 curlew with their wild call come sailing in from the sea, 

 and as they pass you can see even after sunset their long 

 bent beaks clear against the violet sky. The heron calls. 

 The green sandpiper rises with a snipelike call. A shot 

 from the far end of the water sets a group of coot on the 

 wing. They fly over you with the straight directness and 

 impetus of a bullet before they swing on the first arc of a 

 circle that will take them higher and higher, till they are 



