CHAPTER LVI. 



PLOVER SHOOTING. 



-" Beneath this hedge 



Screen we ourselves and dogs close o'er our head 

 The birds will skim : they come, compact and close ; 

 When instant 'mid their ranks the whistling shot 

 Spreads dire destruction." 



Fowling, a Poem, Book v. 



THIS is a highly-exciting diversion, and affords much variety of 

 amusement to the sportsman during mild winters, or when there are 

 but few wild-fowl. England, of all other nations, has always been a 

 favourite resort of plovers : and, be the season mild or severe, these 

 beautiful and delicate fen-birds may be found in their favourite 

 localities. Previous to the inroads of drainage, they were specially 

 abundant in the Lincolnshire fens : 



" For near this batning isle, in me is to be seen, 

 More than on any earth, the plover, gray and green." * 



And they still adhere with determined pertinacity to the soil of that 

 county, wherever a vestige of fen-land remains. 



Plover shooting affords the sportsman good practice with his snipe- 

 gun j and, by loading with small shot, he may have an opportunity 

 of trying his punt-gun at the large congregations of plovers, in early 

 season, before the wild-fowl arrive. It appears by Latham, that they 

 were formerly objects of the falconer's diversion,! and came under 

 the denomination "green-fowl." And, according to Drayton, all 



* Drayton. 



f " Also the haggard doth prey upon green fowl where she espieth her advan- 

 tage the green plover, the bastard plover, and of divers other fowls that might be 

 named." Latham's Fcmlcowry^ A.D. 1658. 



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