60 HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 



hen harrier were also to be found, the former a 

 regular, the latter an occasional, visitor, and the weird 

 banshee note of the wood owl was audible every night. 

 The pigeon tribe were represented by the wood-pigeon, 

 the stock-dove and the blue rock, the latter of which 

 abounded in the numerous caves to which they resorted 

 to -roost and nest. More fell to the gun and rifle 

 when on or upon their way to the fields to feed, than 

 darting out of the caves. The north-west coast was 

 so unsheltered, and possible landing-places below the 

 beetling cliffs were so few in number, that the usual 

 and most sporting method of getting these birds was 

 seldom practicable, much to our regret, as there is cer- 

 tainly no more difficult or attractive mark than a wild 

 rock-pigeon startled out of a cliff cave. The flight of 

 the bird is so swift, and the angle he takes so uncertain, 

 that even if the sportsman is on terra firma his skill is 

 tested in a high degree, and the difficulty is doubled 

 when he is tossing in a little boat on the rollers of the 

 Atlantic. Such difficulties are the salt of sport, and 

 make the swift-flying little bird a prize coveted out of 

 all proportion to his merits as an addition to the pot. 



In May the note of the cuckoo mixes everywhere 

 with the shrill cry of the wildfowl, and their hawk-like 

 flight is a familiar object. A cuckoo of the American 

 yellow-billed species was picked up in 1904, freshly 

 dead from exhaustion, by Captain Adeane, and its 

 skin is now in the Natural History Museum at South 

 Kensington. It seems hard that, driven before the 

 westerly gales right across the broad Atlantic, it 

 should have made the shore alive only to perish after its 

 record voyage. Its fate recalls that of the two human 

 aeronauts, pioneers of their craft, who perished just 



