202 A YEAR OF SPORT AND NATURAL HISTORY. 



his white-collared green neck above the high beech hedge across 

 the water ; and just as he is winging into top speed there is a 

 puff and a flash, a bang reverberating along the valley, loudly 

 bandied from hill to crag, and the bird is cut handsomely from sky 

 to earth. He drops heavily into a placid pool, fully sixty yards 

 away, whence he is brought, by the carefully schooled dog. 

 Before the rattle of the first discharge has ceased to re-echo, a 

 second shot rings sharply out, and another Flapper is arrested in 

 its flight, coming down headlong into a thorn-bush beside the 

 stream. In fancy we see the sporting trio proceeding in single 

 file upwards along the course of a tributary stream. In a hill- 

 begirt amphitheatre they come upon a desolate fen, the stillness 

 only broken by the lonely cry of the curlew wheeling overhead. 

 The gunner stealthily approaches the leeward side of the marsh, 

 picking his footsteps on the spongy margin of the swamp. 

 Suddenly a plump of mallard dart from the reeds, and wing their 

 rapid flight across the peat-red water. Promptly flashes forth a 

 right and left in quick succession. There is a great fluttering of 

 wings, and the dog, dashing in, quickly retrieves two well-favoured 

 young duck. 



In late autumn Flapper-shooting may be auspiciously prosecuted 

 in regions near the coast, on estuaries and on small meres, either at 

 daybreak or after sunset. Good sport is to be looked for by moon- 

 light, when, after feeding, the birds bathe and preen themselves in 

 some favourite watery haunt ; though they are quite as wary in 

 the bright moonbeams as in broadest daylight. Mallard and teal 

 are well-nigh the only exclusively night-feeding water fowl. In 

 the evening gloom, guided by the quacking, arid by the sucking 

 sound of many mandibles (not unlike the sighing of an ebb-tide), 



