150 THE SHOREBIRDS OR WADERS 



disprove the fact that when the guns and the cats and 

 other domestic vermin are added to. the ordinary checks 

 to increase, the game must diminish in numbers rapidly. 

 Mr. H. P. Clement, of Vermont, told me recently that he 

 saw a cat bring a woodcock up to the porch. My cat 

 brought in robins and a flicker, or golden woodpecker, 

 last summer and was very active until it lost its life 

 on account of the flicker". Cats have an open seanson 

 throughout the year, and the destruction of birds by these 

 animals is appalling. Their depredations can be stopped, 

 however, and they will be when it pays to do so. The 

 wilder enemies of th^ woodcock can be controlled, partly 

 at least (they never have been fully checked, even in Eng- 

 land), and the result of such control instantly will be 

 evident. 



Not long ago I went to visit a game preserve a few 

 miles from New York City, where the wild ducks are tre- 

 mendously abundant, thousands of these birds having 

 been artificially reared by a Scotch gamekeeper last 

 spring. As a result of the protection given to the ducks 

 the woodcock have returned in good numbers, and they 

 nested in perfect security last season in the little swamps 

 all over the preserve. The gamekeeper, in order to show 

 that a setter which he had been breaking was well trained, 

 took him into a little alder brake not far from the house, 

 and he pointed one woodcock after another in fine style. 

 A dozen or more birds were flushed on a very small area. 

 One of the birds was shot to prove that the dog would 

 retrieve it, which he did handsomely. I am quite sure 

 there would not be a woodcock on the place were it not 

 for the practical protection afforded. The region is 

 thickly settled, and in the absence of a gamekeeper the 



