The Canada Geese 



for instance, having none to counsel 

 him, appears at times to be quite in- 

 capable of making decision, and allows 

 the fatal approach of the hunter. The 

 situation is still further compromised 

 if the lone bird happens to alight 

 among decoys. "It's plumb scanda- 

 lous," reasons the bird, "the man is 

 coming and these birds stand here like 

 clods. But they ought to know; 

 they were here first." And the 

 real bird awaits his doom. Mr. 

 Bowles tells me that under such cir- 

 cumstances he once killed a perfect- 

 ly able-bodied bird with a stone. 

 They are not afraid of cattle, 

 however, and in the less scrupulous 

 days the pasturing flocks were 

 slaughtered by hunters who had 

 approached under shelter of a led 

 horse or a cow. Sometimes a 

 sportive heifer will resent the in- 

 trusion of wild ducks or geese upon 

 her domain, and it is most amus- 

 ing under such circumstances to 

 see the astonished fowls scramble 

 out of the "cow critter's" way as she charges about and hooks at them. 

 Such a departure from the established order of things constitutes a quite 

 unclassifiable phenomenon, and the birds never think of escape by 

 flight. 



Let a gunner come creeping along the ground on hands and knees, 

 and his guile is detected at half a mile, yet the self-same birds appear to 

 have no conception of a danger which lies below the surface of the ground. 

 Advantage is taken of this weakness through the digging of shooting-pits 

 in the wheat-fields of the Sacramento country. Tame birds or wooden 

 decoys are put out, and it makes no difference how many wild geese 

 pass overhead, so the hunter keeps to his pit until the birds are settling. 

 But the palmy days of shooting are over, they tell us. Our fathers 

 helped themselves a little too liberally. What with market shooting and 

 the increased settlement of the Northland, the wild things have been 

 reduced to a shadow of their former substance. The youngster, indeed, 

 may think he is seeing "a lot of birds" if a dozen Honkers thrill his young 



l86l 



Taken in Washington Photo by the Author 



MOTHER GOOSE 



