286 SHORE BIRDS 



My own experience with these birds has not been 

 extensive. On Long Island I found them so few in 

 numbers and so wild as to make it hardly worth while 

 to go in pursuit of them. In company with a local 

 gunner who thought he could whistle them, I put in 

 some time with them for want of something better to 

 do, but the birds seemed to me to put an additional 

 mile to the distance between us at each whistle. We 

 were entirely unable to stalk them, and those which 

 came anywhere near our ambush were always, in the 

 drawling dialect of my companion, "Tew wide, tew 

 wide." 



In the far West, where I found these birds more 

 abundant and tame, I was accompanied by setters, and, 

 the grouse being abundant, I had no time to devote to 

 birds which did not interest my dogs, and shot but a 

 few specimens. 



A friend of mine, an army officer stationed in Texas, 

 informed me that they kill large numbers of them, 

 driving about in an ambulance, and I regretted much 

 that I could not accept an invitation to shoot them 

 there. I have had many a cruise in an army ambu- 

 lance after all sorts of game, from the lordly elk and 

 buffalo to birds of all sorts, but have never used an 

 army ambulance as a means of approaching the " prai- 

 rie pigeon." 



