22 FPLAXD SHOOTIXG. 



ous bays, marshes, and mud-flats of Long Island and New- 

 Jersey, where they enjoy their natural, abundant food; 

 and there the gunners, securely hid in ambush, await 

 their approach, and greatly thin out the flocks. These 

 migratory tribes are very diverse in their cries, shapes, 

 and color, and usually fly in separate flocks. 



The splendid golden plovers, however, do not resort to 

 these bays, or consort with the bay-birds, but as their 

 natural feast consists of insects, grasshoppers, crickets, 

 etc., they frequent and feed upon upland pastures, and 

 there only are found. In years past, they were found in 

 countless numbers over the grassy slopes of Montauk 

 Point and the hill-sides of Grardiner" s Island, and there 

 for years we successfully interviewed them; but in later 

 years, from some unknown cause, they have forsaken 

 their old haunts, and flown to " fresh fields and pastures 

 new. ■ ' In the above-mentioned bay they still are found 

 in large, though diminished, flocks; and we think that, 

 warned by their destruction in those bays, they pursue 

 their southward course far out to sea, not pausing by 

 the way. We have been told by fishermen that they 

 often have seen their great flocks over the ocean, far 

 from land. In pursuit of them, the gunners issue forth 

 when the tides are out, secreting themselves in grass- 

 dressed boats, or amidst the sedge-grass, and there await 

 the flood-tides, which drive the birds from the marshes, 

 creeks, and mud-flats, and in their passage they are 

 readily lured by the wooden stools and imitative whistles 

 of the sportsman, and, so deceived, they hover and alight, 

 and become an easy prey to the destroyer. It is usual to 

 make the blind at the edge of a pond or creek, and there 

 set out their stools, Avith long legs, in the water, where 

 they will make a more conspicuous show than if planted 

 on a mud-flat on the short grass of the marshes; when the 

 bii'ds. such as the varieties of curlew, martin, willet. 



