LOST OPPORTUNITIES. 125 



a futile effort to drive it over the gun. The bird then made for the sea-shore 

 proper, and alighted on a shingle bank. In following it thither my brother 

 met me, and I also took up the pursuit. From his account I did not think 

 there was much chance of getting within range. This, however, we nearly 

 achieved, and had I not been foolish enough to stop and turn my glasses on 

 to it, I shall always think we should just have got a reasonable shot. As 

 it was, the bird rose directly we resumed our advance, and I only got in a 

 long hurried shot with the left barrel ; and that was the last that I personally 

 saw of the Sociable. It was facing me, as I looked through the glasses, with 

 its cheek turned, and it had a Plover's head, with a conspicuous light stripe 

 above the eye ; it might have been from this view a huge immature Dotterel. 

 On the wing it appeared somewhere about the size of a Lapwing, with very 

 black and white wings. 



On the following day my brother re-established communications with the 

 stranger on the sands ; it ran straight for the highest sand-hill, and scuttled 

 up to the top. Needless to say, he got no shot there ; it again did some 

 soaring. Seeing that the bird had so well gauged the range of a twelve-bore, 

 we hoped to outwit it on the next day by taking out a double-barrel eight, but, 

 though we dragged this weighty piece of ordnance about for the best part of 

 fifteen miles, we never got a glimpse of the Sociable, which for us was hence- 

 forth a lost bird. As we afterwards discovered, other shooters had seen our 

 bird, and had been equally struck with it. One couple, so they said, put it 

 out of a furze-bush on a sheep-walk, but from what I know of the said sheep- 

 walk I suspect it was only amongst some scattered furze-bushes, not in one. 

 I have seen Golden Plover amongst them at other times. The one had 

 judged it to be a Little Bustard, which was reasonable ; the other proclaimed 

 it a Bittern, which was absurd. What Bittern would stroll about on an open 

 sandy plain, or disport itself on shingle, in broad daylight ? I can vouch for 

 its not being a Thick-knee, a bird I know well; so if it wasn't a Sociable, what 

 was it ? Someone suggested a Courser, but I saw it well enough to be sure 

 that there was no black streak near the eye, and the only other tenable 

 suggestion was an Isabelline Lapwing. If so, it had made away with its 

 crest, and was apparently ostracized by its own genus, for there were no 

 other Lapwings about. 



So much for the Sociable Plover. A few days later, in the same locality, 

 I added another good bird to my list of derelict rarities. This was a 

 Harrier, probably a female Montagu. I was enjoying a frugal lunch with 

 a friend in a moist depression on the marsh, when far off, but straight in 

 front of us, I spied the long peaked wings and the short neck of a large 



