146 Sporting Notes in the Far East. 



In wild and stormy weather, the geese in the daytime will not go 

 so far afield, but will congregate in numbers in the middle of the 

 bare fields adjoining the river banks, and a near approach to them 

 is quite out of the question. Many are the times that I have attempted 

 it, but crawl and wriggle along on the sand as you like, long before 

 you can get within shot, the sentry goose (generally a confounded 

 gander) will give the alarm, and with loud objections at being 

 disturbed, away they all go. No ! the only road to any chance of 

 success, is to scrape a hole in the sand under some favoured aerial 

 track, get into it, and trust to some unlucky bird flopping over your 

 " scouch hole " within shot. 



Quail are in, around the aforementioned swamps, in the month 

 of May, but they only appear in dry and droughty weather ; and 

 even when they are about, owing to the large number of the hawk 

 tribe continually hovering overhead (though helped by a dog) it is very 

 hard to get them to rise ; and then when they do get up, the poor 

 little beggars dart off all doubled up in a heap, only to drop again 

 before you have hardly had time to get the gun up to your shoulder. 



In the Bois de Boulogne, there is generally a solitary hare or two 

 squatting in the patches of scrub ; but you require to be exception- 

 ally on the alert to procure even a snap shot. And here also 

 woodcock are sometimes flushed, in the months of March and 

 April. 



