74 BIBD LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER IV. 



MARSH BIRDS. 



FOR POWDER AND PASTIES. 



PLENTY of sportsmen who are keen enough on heather or 

 stubble "think small" of the various game of the marsh 

 lands. They will when beating grouse cover pull trigger 

 on a snipe, if he gets up out of a runnel, or springs from 

 a miniature swamp where bog myrtles make diminutive 

 forests on the wet peat tussocks. I have even seen these 

 shooters " blaze " into a flock of plovers coming temptingly 

 overhead, but it was always with an implied protest and 

 a sense of the un worthiness of the game. Myself I do not 

 much sympathize with them. Each sportsman will have his 

 particular fancy in such matters, just as one man will go 

 into ecstasies over a view which to another may be tame or 

 barren. But, though not the first of sports, marsh shooting 

 is very excellent in its way, and here at home, even in these 

 days of hard draining and the reclaiming of land Nature 

 never intended for cultivation, it is practised with enthusiasm 

 and success by some of the keenest gunners on foot. 



They may at least claim for their sport that it is universal 

 and world wide. Other countries have their distinctive 

 shootings to some extent. Pheasant shooters will not find 

 much to do outside English shires, and he who loves the 

 grouse must go to Scotland, while big game hunters look to 

 Norway for reindeer, Canada for her moose and bison, India 

 for the tiger, and Africa for the lion and elephant; but he 



