WILD-FOWL SHOOTING. 93 



CHAPTER VIII. 



The Locality. Costume. Waterproofs. Shooting with Punt Gun, 

 Wild-Pigeons. Rabbits. Hernery. Herons and their Habits. 



HAVING as yet confined my accounts chiefly to our 

 campaigns among the salmon and the deer, I purpose 

 in this Chapter to give you, by way of variety, a few 

 extracts from my diary for last month on other kinds 

 of sport. 



My first shall be a day's duck- shooting; not indeed 

 as being remarkable for any great luck, for the sport 

 was rather under than above the average ; but because 

 I am not likely, as I had hoped, to have an opportunity 

 of recurring to that particular branch of shooting, and 

 therefore I wish to give what has been my own 

 experience in it. 



Alister, Walter, and myself were the parties engaged; 

 a gillie and retriever forming a by no means un- 

 important addition to the party. The scene of 

 operations was a loch or meer, lying in a low marshy 

 locality; being, even at the time we visited it, of 

 considerable extent, though I am told that it is much 

 larger through the winter and spring, of no great depth, 

 and abounding in sedge and water-plants of many 

 different kinds. There were two or three small islands, 

 distinguishable from the surrounding mass of weeds by 

 the group of willows crowded together upon each of 



