BALNAGOWN AND BIRDS. 93 



I enjoyed the sight and sound of him, but it seemed a pity not to 

 accept his invitation for a shot. I went down to the stream's side and 

 planted myself where he must inevitably fly directly over my head if 

 he for one time more made the trip over the familiar course from which 

 he had not veered a yard in a dozen rounds. 



But he came not here again. Wise bird, or else an unreal one. 

 Yet he was rather too tangible for a phantom. The sound of his voice 

 would have convinced almost anyone of his corporeal capacity, so it 

 must have been his superb intelligence which deprived me of a chance 

 to write "curlew" after pheasant, partridge, hare, rabbit ; words which 

 figured in a description of this day's bag. 



The great variety of shooting for this day made the sport engaging. 

 After the turnip field and the collection there of sixteen pheasants and 

 a partridge, I sat under the lee of a hill not over fifty feet high and 

 waited while the underkeeper went around to drive birds in my direc- 

 tion. Campbell was to my right, further on. I could not see much 

 in my front, but there was clear space behind me. 



I got the first shot, a hen pheasant coming like the wind. I threw 

 up my gun with the old instinctive motion so often used in shooting 

 at ducks, and had the satisfaction of seeing my bird crumple in the air 

 and fall quite dead. Not much later a magnificent cock broke cover 

 in Campbell's front. He was moving mightily for the woods in the 

 head keeper's rear and he reached them, too, because the two barrels 

 sounding below him passed as a salute rather than an assault. 



Campbell is a good shot, too, but a hurrying pheasant seen only 

 when he is squarely over you and in full flight is no easy mark. I was 

 rather complacent as I thought of my dead bird and Campbell's two 

 misses, and the self-satisfactory feeling was only a little disturbed when 

 a cock broke rather quietly on my left and I slam-banged two charges 

 from the automatic at him without even quickening his wing motion. 



I observed to myself that that sort of thing just had to happen oc- 

 casionally. I know now what it was. I would have been able to say 

 then, had I thought very seriously about it. My old fault of aiming 

 at the birds as if I were shooting a rifle. 



When a man using a shotgun at a moving object undertakes to 

 use special care he just naturally falls into the error of shooting 

 directly at the bird. Or if he does hold in front he so often stops 



