MORE ABOUT FOWLING ON LONGSHORE. 295 



may hear from feeding fowl ; after flapping down to 

 them for a moment, back he comes to these parts of 

 the beach I have mentioned. He knows that fowl 

 come there also ; and the shooters know it too, and 

 there they come to lie in wait for them, or to put 

 them up out of the bents and tide-flashes. 



Curlew, grey plover, snipe, and woodcock are very 

 partial to this broken foreshore. So quickly do the 

 birds dash out of the bent tussocks, and with such 

 marvellous speed do they twist in and out of the 

 scattered hillocks, that the chances are far more in 

 their favour than in that of the guns. I know this 

 well : once upon a time I got myself tripped up in 

 these bents, and my gun went off as I fell. I rose 

 and reloaded, my companion quietly observing, "It 

 might have been worse." He moved on a few yards, 

 when up got a snipe, darting and scaping in the most 

 frantic manner. It was a snap-shot, and, as we 

 thought, a miss, when all at once one wing dropped. 

 He was down but where ? That was the question. 

 The old saying about looking for needles in bundles 

 of hay could have been very well applied to the 

 search for that snipe on the broken shore. The 

 water-spaniel had been left at home, tired out with a 



