Water Fowl 61 



that was ordinarily a floral coat of many colours was 

 white with these fine birds. I crept around to a little 

 canon or wash, and, giving my clever horse the word, he 

 charged them at a pace that brought me into the very 

 heart of the flock. If the little lake had been blown up 

 the effect could not have been more electrical, as the 

 geese seemed to rise directly into the air with splendid 

 reaches, while others, as though demoralised, swept 

 around me like an aureola as I sat in the saddle finger- 

 ing the trigger and resisting the temptation that every 

 pot-hunter embraces. Then I took my horse some dis- 

 tance off and hid in a brush heap from which I watched 

 others come in graceful alignment a splendid specta- 

 cle. Suddenly seeing the little silver-faced lagoon, 

 perhaps a thousand feet below them, nestled in the 

 green, they went to pieces literally, and tumbling down 

 out of the heavens, to alight with grace and dignity 

 indescribable. 



Here, too, is Hutchin's goose, a clever bird. All 

 these birds present an interesting spectacle in their 

 great migrations along the Sierras, where they are often 

 picked off with the rifle, which, to my mind, not being 

 in the goose business, is one of the really sportsmanlike 

 and legitimate methods for its taking off. Game itself 

 is but one feature of this sport ; the perfect days, the 

 grand vistas of mountains and mesa, the hills, the sand 

 dunes, and the roar of the distant sea as it piles on the 

 sand beyond the lagoon, all tend to add to the charm of 

 life along the winding lagoons of Southern California. 



