108 
ANATIDiE. 
fatal effect. The birds are generally fired at on the water, but 
sometimes on wing also. They have, as a natural consequence, 
become much wilder and more on the alert since these large guns 
have come into use. 
Inland Shooting. — Strangford Lough has its own immense 
stock of wigeon, which remain always there during the season, as 
well as its daily visitors from the neighbouring bay, for it also 
produces the favourite Zostera in abundance. A chain of high 
hills lies between these two marine loughs, and, as the wigeon 
flew pretty much over the same track, it was a regular practice of 
shooters to station themselves behind the fences about the hill- 
top before daybreak, to get a shot at the birds as they passed over- 
head. Hence some persons regularly went from Belfast, a distance 
of three Irish miles, in the dark, on the chance of getting a 
passing shot. When quite calm and fine, the birds generally flew 
high and out of range, but when blowing hard, and especially if 
against them, they kept low, and shots were tolerably certain to 
be had. They flew so very low, when it blew a gale, that, in the 
words of the shooters, “ the flocks had to rise to get over the 
ditches !”* But this sport, like the barrel- shooting, has been 
discontinued on account of the diminished number of birds. 
When a low tract of marshy ground, called the bog-meadows — 
commencing about a mile and a half from the town of Belfast, 
and extending a mile in length — is flooded in winter, wigeon, 
and others of the duck tribe, resort to it at twilight to feed. 
The ditch-banks, which divide the fields, remaining dry, are then 
frequented by fowlers to get shots at the birds as they pass. If 
it be about the time of high water, when they cannot feed in the 
bay, different species fly thence to these meadows, and do so 
regularly from inland places of security where they have been 
throughout the day ; but not very many were killed here during my 
own experience of wild-fowl shooting, and now the pursuit is 
almost abandoned. I have often gone for this sport, and felt a 
kind of wild joy in hearing the ringing of the pinions through 
* ‘ Ditch’ in the north of Ireland is applied to the bank of earth, and not to the 
sunken portion of the fence. 
