The Teal 
8i 
morning and returning to the bogs in the evening. In fact, all the surface- 
feeders will go readily to sea every day when their safety depends upon it. 
Teal seldom come to estuaries in winter until the frost is sufficiently severe 
to preclude all hope of an immediate thaw, and it generally takes a good 
week of cold to move them down. Their appearance on the coast is always a 
cause of great satisfaction to the professional gunner, for they are the easiest 
of all duck to circumvent, and keep so close together that the result of a shot 
is generally both successful and remunerative. It is not before many shots 
have been taken at them that they become wild, and even then their alertness 
is oftener the sign of open weather coming, and their consequent restlessness, 
than any extreme fear on their part. Teal are wonderful weather prophets, 
and seem to know almost a day ahead when the thaw is coming. They may 
be seen back again at their favourite lake or marsh whilst it is still frozen 
hard, and, sitting on the ice near some well-known spring, they wait for the 
thaw that is sure to come on the following day. 
During the day the Teal is one of the most silent and inactive of birds. 
It will sit for hours motionless, apparently lost in a brown study, or with the 
head buried in the scapulars. Out on the estuary a pack rests on the tidal 
heave without a sign of movement until night comes and with it the desire 
for food. In the daytime, during the early autumn, even in our much 
disturbed islands. Teal are sometimes extremely tame, and will permit the 
approach of man within a few yards before flying away, and there are always 
certain holes in the large bogs where Teal may be found and closely 
approached with certainty unless they have been previously disturbed. On 
being flushed they shoot up straight into the air, sometimes very rapidly, and 
often swaying slightly and rendering themselves a by no means easy mark 
in fact, I once heard a friend, who had ineffectually expended one hundred 
cartridges in one day, declare that rising Teal were far more difficult to kill 
than snipe. Be that as it may, I can remember certain windy days when 
driven Teal were wild and ' dodgy,' and were quite as difficult to bag as 
the snipe with whom they flew. Teal can suddenly turn in the midst of 
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