WEATHER ON SHOOTING. 203 



weather I am convinced. I have met them 

 also in small parties of four or five, blundering 

 about the country and offering a chance shot 

 as though they were being driven, a circum- 

 stance which I have never known to occur 

 save during a time of snow. The wild duck, 

 both the mallard tribe and the teal, lie close in 

 the sedges in the same season; but, perhaps, 

 the most diverting fun is to be had with the 

 plover, green and golden. The latter birds 

 are wonderfully conservative in their haunts ; 

 the frost does not find them unprepared, inas- 

 much as they will appear to have marked out 

 beforehand the place to go to when the earth 

 is white and ironbound. For years they will 

 return to a particular field on a particular hill, 

 as though each successive division of their vast 

 armies had communicated the situation of the 

 locality one to another. I have gone to such 

 favoured spots with a perfect certainty of see- 

 ing a wary squadron either on foot or wheel- 

 ing with all sorts of eccentric but beautiful 

 curves in the sky overhead. There are indeed 

 few sights prettier than the movements of a 

 plover army. It sometimes consists of both 



