A WARY BIRD 299 



dried apples without getting out of order. There is 

 another thing you have which is not to be sneezed at 

 the gratification of knowing that with your trusty 

 gun, your hidden retreats, your enticing decoys and 

 your unwearied patience you are more than a match 

 for this the grandest and most wary of all game 

 birds. 



" Nor on the surges of the boundless air, 

 Though borne triumphant, are they safe; the gun, 

 Glanc'd just, and sudden, from the gunner's eye, 

 O'ertakes their sounding pinions; and again, 

 Immediate brings them from the towering wing 

 Dead to the ground ; or drives them wide dispersed, 

 Wounded and wheeling various, down the wind." 



This season the brant arrived in great numbers at 

 Monomoy as early as February, but finding their 

 natural food the eel grass sealed in ice, they were 

 forced to wing their way backward, after many at- 

 tempts to get at their feeding grounds ; the cold 

 weather thus compelled them to make trips of hun- 

 dreds of miles to the southward before they could 

 obtain their sustenance. But they are grand " flyers " 

 and a few hundred miles of flight is only a morning's 

 "constitutional" for them, and they don't seem to 

 worry the least bit about it. As soon as the ice 

 melted and their favorite eel grass was exposed to 

 view, then they arrived in countless numbers. Some 

 say that between the fifth and tenth of April more 

 birds were at the Island than ever were seen before 



