224. AVILD-FOWL SHOOTING 



If the day be calm, the rising bubbles will show where they 

 are ; you can then clap your gun to your shoulder, ready 

 to fire. Always, in such cases, shoot on wing, and be sure 

 to fire well forward : should a diver only be winged, it is 

 useless to tire your retriever in pursuit ; but if he is at all 

 struck about the legs also, a good dog should be able to 

 secure him. 



So much for the small morillon. The golden-eye is a 

 much more artful bird, and requires more caution. If, with- 

 out seeing an enemy, he is at all alarmed while diving near 

 the shore, he will probably swim out to a considerable 

 distance reconnoitring all the time, and making a noise 

 something like a single note of the hurdy-gurdy. You 

 may perhaps expect his return, and wait for him ; but 

 although he may remain about the same place, making 

 these calls, and apparently careless, he is all the time very 

 suspicious ; and I only once or twice, in my whole expe- 

 rience, knew him return to the spot where he was first 

 discovered. Should he get sight of you, there is no hope, 

 even if he does not take wing, which he most likely will. 

 The little morillon may return, if you think him worth 

 waiting for ; but he is so hard and coarse on the table, that 

 it would be paying him too great a compliment. The 

 golden-eye, on the contrary, is a great delicacy a suf- 

 ficient proof, I think, were there no other, that moril- 

 lons are not young golden-eyes, as many suppose. This 

 idea, I have little doubt, arises from the colour of the 

 female golden-eye being pretty much like that of the 

 morillon. The shape, however, is different, and the size of 



