i 3 o A BIRD COLLECTOR'S MEDLEY. 



butterfly net, and without any great confidence in our resources we re- 

 turned in the early morning to the attack. It proved an easier business 

 than we had dared to hope. The Owl had dropped down to the lower 

 ledge, and seemed, poor creature, very groggy, but though I got the net 

 over him with comparative ease, he fought like a demon when once in 

 the toils, and there was much work for Aesculapius before he was finally 

 subdued. 



It is not often that a premonition that a gun is likely to burst is regarded 

 by its owner as a valid reason for trying to sell it second-hand to an un- 

 suspecting friend, but it has been so once, at all events. The friend in 

 question expressed a desire to try it first, and was invited by the owner 

 to accompany him to a neighbouring marsh. At the first shot the gun 

 kicked violently; so with the second; after the third the prospective 

 purchaser found himself on his back in the mud seeing stars. The owner, 

 not one whit abashed, strolled up to him. " Well, I'm blessed if I didn't 

 think she was going to bust soon," was his apt comment on the event. 



How many people, I wonder, know the exact range of a gun ? If I 

 don't myself I ought to, for I learnt it by experience the very first day I ever 

 went shore-shooting. I arranged with another novice that we should take 

 it in turns to sit in a stranded boat and shoot, while the other drove. I 

 drove first, and with great success steered a small flock of Dunlin straight 

 for the boat. My friend fired while they were still straight, and the only 

 thing hit was myself. I was fairly peppered, though fortunately in no 

 vital spot. But after all there was somewhere about a hundred yards between 

 us, and the experience of the boatman who went out with a keen but 

 short-sighted collector must have been far more terrifying than my own. 



He worked his man up to such a pitch of excitement by his successful 

 whistling and his multitudinous directions that the sportsman, feeling, I 

 suppose, that there was a bird to be shot somewhere, though he could not 

 see it, finally let drive at some imaginary Wader underneath the rower's 

 arm a shot which stopped not the bird but the boat, for it blgw a hole in 

 the bows and sank her ! 



It is marvellous that more accidents do not happen amongst shore- 

 shooters when one considers the treacherous walking and the general 

 recklessness that supervenes on all sides if a Duck does happen to put in 

 an appearance during the day. It seems a recognized case of sauve qui pent, 

 so far as onlookers are concerned. Not that Ducks are always un- 

 approachable on salt water. One of the softest shots I ever saw was made 

 at a September Wigeon in an estuary. I was rowing barely clear of the 



