decoys and your unwearied patience you are more than a 



match for this the grandest and most wary of all game 



birds. 



" Xor ou the surges of the boundless air, 

 Though borne triumphant, are they safe ; the gun, 

 Glanc'd just, and sudden, from the gunner's eye, 

 O'ertakes their sounding pinions ; and again, 

 Immediate brings them from the towering wing, 

 Dead to the ground ; or drives them wide dispersed, 

 Wounded and wheeling various, down the wind." 



This season the brant arrived in great numbers at 

 Monomay as early as February, but finding their natural 

 food — the eel grass — sealed in ice, they were forced to 

 wing their way backward, after many attempts to get at 

 their feeding grounds ; the cold weather thus compelling 

 them to make trips of hundreds of miles to the Southward 

 before they could obtain their sustenance. But they are 

 grand "flyers" and a few hundred miles of flight is only 

 like a morning walk for them, and they don't seem to worry 

 the least bit about it ; but as soon as the ice melted and the 

 succulent eel grass was exposed to view, then they arrived 

 in countless numbers. Some say that between the fifth 

 and tenth of April more birds were at the Island than ever 

 were seen before at one time. But the wrecks and wreck- 

 age there, drew all manner of sail boats to the scene to get 

 coal and lumber, and thus the birds were continually dis- 

 turbed in their feeding. They were occasionally fired on 

 at long range from these sail boats, which harassed and 

 frightened them, keeping them for hours on the move. 

 This, together with unfavorable winds and storms, reduced 

 the total bag for the season to one-hundred and ninety- 



io8 



