PLOVER-SHOOTING. 211 



nervous, keen, erratic little birds, sometimes so tame that 

 they can be approached at a short distance, and again so 

 wild that the gunner can hardly get within range, except 

 by the most careful maneuvering. It is hardly worth 

 while to undertake hunting them on foot. Riding upon 

 them in a vehicle is the best way to handle them. That 

 is the way they are usually hunted in the West and 

 Southwest, and it is a very successful method. This is a 

 popular form of sport in Nebraska and Kansas, and great 

 bags are often made, fifty birds to a gun being no extraor- 

 dinary score. I am sure I can not see why a couple of 

 dozen would not do as well. In speaking further of the 

 sport of upland plover shooting, I shall quote partly 

 from an article on that sport which I had occasion to 

 write, in 1889, in the course of a series of articles upon 

 field sports, published in the Olobe- Democrat newspaper, 

 of St. Louis. Speaking in the early spring, this recountal 

 said: 



" This bird, in its physical configuration, might appear 

 to be a cross between a jacksnipe and a sparrow-hawk, 

 but it isn't, although it is marked somewhat like the 

 former bird, and in its flight might, at a little distance, be 

 mistaken for the latter, which it resembles in bigness of 

 body and spread of wing. The upland plover, however, 

 although it often hovers aloft, or skates down with 

 strongly curved wing to some selected lighting-spot, does 

 not sail in long parallels, as does the little hawk, but con- 

 tinuously works its passage with repeated flappings of 

 the wings, and in its hasty flights its wings describe so 

 large an arc that they seem to touch like wide fans, first 

 above and then below the body of the bird. 



"This peculiarity will betray it at once to the hunter 

 who has become familiar with it, even did he not become 

 advised of its presence by that long, liquid, silvery, and 

 sweetly musical note which drops down like a spoonful 



