
32 SUGGESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS FOR FIELD-WORK. 
to keep ata little distance, yet near enough to arouse all the 
birds as you pass: you may catch them on wing, or pick them 
off just as they settle after a short flight. In this shooting, two 
persons, one on each side, can together do more than twice as 
much work as one. Thickets and tangled undergrowth are 
favorite resorts of many birds; but when very close, or, as 
often happens, over miry ground, they are hard places to shoot 
in. As you come thrashing through the brush, the little inhab- 
itants are scared into deeper recesses; but if you keep still a 
few minutes in some favorable spot, they are reassured, and — 
will often come back to take a peep at you. A good deal of 
standing still will repay you at such times; needless to add, 
you cannot be too lightly loaded for such shooting, when birds 
are mostly out of sight if a dozen yards off. When yourself 
concealed in a thicket, and no birds appear, you can often call 
numbers about you by a simple artifice. Apply the back of your 
hand to your slightly parted lips, and suck in air; it makes a 
nondescript ‘‘screeping” noise, variable in intonation at your 
whim, and some of the sounds resemble the cries of a wounded 
bird, or a young one in distress. It wakes up the whole neigh- 
borhood, and sometimes puts certain birds almost beside them- 
selves, particularly in the breeding season. Torturing a 
wounded bird to make it scream in agony accomplishes the 
same result, but of course is only permissible under great exi- 
gency. In penetrating swamps and marshes, the best advice 
I can give you is to tell you to get along the best way you can. 
Shooting on perfectly open ground offers much the same case ; 
you must be left to your own devices. Iwill say, however, you 
can ride on horseback, or even in a buggy, nearer birds than 
they. will allow you to walk upto them. Sportsmen take advan- 
tage of this to get within a shot of the upland plover, usually a 
very wary bird in populous districts; I have driven right into 
a flock of wild geese ; in California they often train a bullock to 
graze gradually up to geese, the gunner being hidden by its 
body. There is one trick worth knowing ; it is not to let a bird 
that has seen you know by your action that you have seen it, 
but to keep on unconcernedly, gradually sidling nearer. I have 


