THE GREY LAG-GOOSE. 57 
young wheat till nine o’clock in the morning and back again at 
their pastures by 4 P.M. 
When not out feeding they spend their time dozing or 
daudling about on the margin of some lake or the bank of some 
river, always by preference choosing some island in these for 
their noon-tide siesta. Unless disturbed, they very rarely take 
to the water; where yousee a flock swimming about in mid 
stream of one of our larger rivers or in the open water of some 
broad, between the hours of ten and three, you may generally 
safely conclude that they have been recently fired at, or fright- 
ened in some way. 
They feed exclusively, so far as my experience goes, on tender 
shoots of grass, young corn, and other spring crops, and on 
grain of all kinds—gram, when nearly ripe, being a great attrac- 
tion to them. Generally they are pretty well on the alert when 
feeding inland, but in parts of the country where the people 
have no guns, and there are no native or European sportsmen 
about, they get very bold; and when put up at one end of a 
field, fluster lazily away and settle a couple of hundred 
yards away in another field, and give the cultivators a 
good deal of trouble, since three or four hundred of these 
birds will clear off an incredible amount of grain in a morning. 
In such localities you may with a common blanket, donned 
native-fashion over head and body, walk up to within thirty 
yards of a flock, and then judiciously startling them geta 
couple of effective shots into the mass, as it rises. In such cases 
never fire until they have risen, and are about the level of your 
face. A shot on the ground, amongst the crops, with an ordinary 
twelve bore may yield three, generally only two, often only 
one; the same shot fired when the flock is on the wing, and 
about gun level, will account for from five to eight. I have often 
got ten, and once or twice more, with two barrels in such cases. 
Where, however, they have been once thus shot at, you will 
not get near them again for some time without further pre- 
cautions, but even where on the alert, you may often stalk 
them behind a horse and get to within forty or fifty yards. In 
such cases it is best to make sure of your one or two birds on 
the ground with the first shot, as you will seldom have time 
for more than one shot after they rise. 
Although they fise rather awkwardly and slowly, with 
violent and noisy flappings of their wings, they fly very strongly 
and easily when once well off, and I do not know a more 
beautiful sight than the sudden and rapid descent of a large 
flock from high in the air to some sandbank. The flock comes 
along in sober state, circles round decorously once or twice, and 
then suddenly, as though all hands had been piped to skylark, 
down they come with incredible rapidity, twisting and turning, 
with an ease and grace for which no one could at other times 
have given them credit. They swim well, no doubt, and dive 
H 
