FLAPPER SHOOTING. 201 



on the subject, one is justified, even in September, in designating 

 the comparatively recently fledged young ducks as " Flappers," for 

 they do not in their first season achieve the full glory of adultness. 

 As soon as ever the inner side of the wing is fully clothed, they 

 take to flying ; their bones, previously of a gristly character, 

 quickly harden, giving the bird full power and use of its pinions. 

 But it is only the full plumaged or older males that exhibit the 

 feathers so useful in fly-making, and which may be seen in nearly all 

 salmon flies. So it is of Flappers and Flapper shooting that we dis- 

 course. About August they repair to cornfields, till disturbed by 

 harvest people. Then they frequent rivers, streams, and the wet parts 

 of commons, wastes, dingles and moors. One conjures up a picture 

 of a sportsman, duly equipped, with solitary attendant and steady 

 well-trained dog (for choice a brown Irish spaniel, known to some 

 lips as a retriever), plodding up a lonely valley, hemmed in with 

 rolling moors. Alternately pool and cascade, the rivulet comes 

 towards and past him. The scarlet berries of the mountain ash 

 are finely foiled by the bronzed expanse of bracken waving on the 

 hill-side. His path is carpeted with moss and lichen, with sedge 

 and rush, with coarse red and yellow herbage, and with the rich 

 green of the occasional bog patches which quake beneath his 

 feet. As he clatters over a granite boulder, a mallard rises 

 noisily, capping the rushes with his broad, strong wings, and sails 

 swiftly away to a soggy fastness far overhead. Bearing in mind 

 Colonel Hawker's advice, the sportsman halloos ; whereupon a 

 leash of Flappers flutter from the reedy margin of the stream, 

 some thirty paces distant, shaping their flight in the course of the 

 vanishing mallard. The gun is brought smartly to the shoulder. 

 One of the three birds, a male, is a tempting mark, as he stretches 



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