THE GREEN-WINGED TEAL. 241 
ward with a short, sudden twist among the reeds or 
rushy covert, exactly after the fashion of the same bird. 
The commoner and, in our opinion—where these birds 
are abundant either along the courses of winding drains 
or streamlets, or in large reedy marshes, with wet soil 
and occasional pools or splashes—far the more exciting 
way of killing them is to go carefully and warily on foot, 
with a good medium-sized double-gun, say of eight to ten 
pounds weight, and a thoroughly well broke and steady 
spaniel, to retrieve and occasionally to flush the birds, 
which will sometimes, though rarely, lie very hard. A 
good sportsman will frequently, thus late in the autumn, 
when the mornings are sharp and biting, and the noons 
warm and hazy, but before the ice makes, pick up, on 
favorable ground, his eight or nine couple in a day’s 
walking, with a chance of picking up at the same time a 
few Snipe, Golden Plovers, Curlew, or Godwit; and this, 
in onr mind, is equal to slaughtering a boat load by 
sneaking up in ambush to within twenty yards of a great 
company, whistling to make them lift their heads and 
ruffle up their loosened plumage, so as to give easy 
entrance to the shot, and then pouring into them at half 
point-blank range, a half pound of heavy shot. 
“In the southern States they are commonly taken,” 
says Wilson, in “vast numbers, in traps placed on the 
small dry eminences that here and there rise above the 
water of the inundated rice-fields. These places are 
strewed with rice, and by the common contrivance 
11 
