I 86 WILD-FOWL SHOOTING. 



on his part, a single whisk of his dog's tail, 

 and the birds will swerve out of range, as if 

 with a single and perfectly simultaneous im- 

 pulse, whistling and careering higher and 

 higher, until they are beyond sight and hear- 

 ing. They are accompanied not only by the. 

 vigilant vanguard of their own tribe, but by 

 flank brigades of the green plover or peewit 

 a bird with a uniform of a completely different 

 pattern, and with movements of loose array, 

 which contrast remarkably with the parade pre- 

 cision of the golden plover. The peewits, how- 

 ever, are watchful, and more keen-sighted than 

 their associates. They fly slower, now and 

 again tumbling like tumbler pigeons in a gay, 

 gleeful mode. They are by no means as good 

 to eat as the others, and, somehow, are almost 

 disagreeably tenacious of life as a starling or 

 a wood pigeon. If you only maim them, you 

 have to put them through a course of killing of 

 which I shall spare my readers the description. 

 As a piece of plover-shooting strategy, it is a 

 paying device to erect mounds in those portions 

 of the fen which, from time immemorial, are 

 the haunts or resorts of the birds. You may 



