210 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
apparently too great a liberty, for several of the birds immediately flew up 
and mobbed him, driving him from tree to tree, until, wearied out by their 
persecution, the poor bird took wing, and, after circling round the heronry 
for a time, as though loth to quit his unfriendly relations, mounting high 
in the air, disappeared over the Arne peninsula in the direction of Wych 
and South Bay, a more retired situation than Wareham Channel. This 
bird continued to resort to the harbour for a fortnight or more, but owing to 
the way in which the other birds mobbed him, or to natural wildness, finally 
departed, experiencing on one occasion a narrow escape from a pound and a 
half of bullets fired from a huge punt-gun! A more effectual shot at 
Spoonbills than that, however, was once made here by a gunner named 
Matthews. He fired his punt-gun at about fifteen of these birds on 
Patchin’s Point and killed no less than five, for which he got, I believe, ten 
shillings a-piece—a good day’s work for him. Another gunner named 
Orchard shot one, took it home and ate it. He told me that it was a very 
good bird, only rather too fat. A Spoonbill made its appearance here in 
June, 1877, the men about Wareham Bay insisting that it was the same 
bird that had come the year before. I did not happen to see it, but the 
one I saw was an immature bird with little or no crest. I forget the exact 
date of Matthews killing the five, but it was a good many years since—a 
dozen at least I should say. Most of the gunners here are acquainted with 
this bird, which shows that its appearance is tolerably frequent.—T. M. 
Pixs (Westport, Wareham). 
PLover SHOOTING ON THE STIRLINGSHIRE Coast.—There are two ways 
in which Golden Plover may be shot singly in the low-lying fields adjoining 
the Firth of Forth, or upon the mud-flats beyond the sea-wall. Both ways 
afford beautiful shooting—none prettier or more satisfactory. The tide 
along our coast, on receding, leaves a vast extent of mud-flat, or “ slink,” as 
it is locally named. When the tide returns it washes up against the sea- 
wall in spring-tides, or in neap-tides leaves a strip of greater or lesser width 
along shore of mud and shells, with, at certain points, patches or corners of 
salt marsh. About a gun-shot from the sea-wall, and close to the mouth 
of the River Avon, which separates Stirlingshire from Linlithgow, is a bank 
of sand and cockle-shells, which is only covered during unusually high tides. 
For ordinary shore-shooting from this bank the September tides are the 
most productive. When the tide is at the full, Plovers are frequenting 
the great open stretches of ploughed “ carse-land” which extends for miles 
in a westerly and northerly direction reaching to Falkirk and Stirling. 
When the wind is southerly, or south-west, or north-west, they congregate 
at localities further inland; when easterly or northerly they prefer the fields 
nearer the sea-wall, although exceptions do occur to the above rule. At this 
time the shore-shooter must leave the sand-bank and the “slink,” and search 
