124 A BIRD COLLECTOR'S MEDLEY. 



True, I did on one red-lettered day 23rd December, 1899 kill nine Snipe 

 with eleven cartridges, one bird only escaping me, for one fell to my second 

 barrel. But that this really happened scarcely any, save the few who saw 

 them in the flesh, have ever believed; fewer still have ever satisfactorily 

 explained the phenomenon, and amongst these latter was certainly not my 

 spaniel " Shot," for by the time the ninth bird fell he seemed quite scared, 

 and evidently thought there was something uncanny about so unorthodox 

 an exhibition on my part. 



From this piece of undisguised bragging, pardonable, perhaps, in one who 

 so rarely does anything worth bragging about, I return to the chastening 

 contemplation of the far more numerous birds that I have missed. Of course 

 one may easily be mistaken in the matter of supposed misses. Had I missed 

 a bird which I shot in 1903 on the Norfolk sand-hills, I should always have 

 imagined that I had let go a Killdeer Plover. This bird rose from the grass, 

 and flew straight away from me. By its shape I judged it to be a Plover, 

 and as it had a bright red rump I thought it must be a Killdeer, and brought 

 it down. What was my disgust, when I got there, to find that it was an 

 immature Grey Plover, previously wounded, and with its rump soaked with 

 blood. 



After all, the getting or missing of rarities is to a great extent a matter 

 of luck, so much depends on when and where they turn up. I shudder now 

 to think how near I was to losing my Pectoral Sandpiper at Aldeburgh. I 

 certainly do not owe its acquisition to my marksmanship, about which, as 

 regards that particular occasion, the less said the better. The bird now 

 adorns my collection because it happened to have a penchant for a special 

 spot, and because it was also alas for it ! a bird of unusual persistency. 

 What I suspect I shall always regard as the miss of my life was the missing 

 of a Sociable Plover on the Norfolk coast in September, 1903. This bird, 

 though it has failed to secure perhaps I should say successfully eluded a 

 place in history, can, I think, in the realms of mystery, take precedence over 

 all other aspirants to renown. 



Its pursuit was in this wise : My brother started it on a circular sandy 

 plain; wind S.S.E., weather fine. From the start it judged the range of 

 a twelve-bore to a nicety, and for two hours he escorted it about the estuary, 

 engaging in firing exercise whenever he got inside one hundred yards, which 

 was not very often. During this time the bird occasionally soared aloft, and 

 then returned to the plain for a run. Its appearance was so unusual that the 

 mussel-seekers, a race of beings whose stolidity I have never before known 

 to be upset, left their work and spontaneously joined in the pursuit, making 



