82 
SHORE BIRDS. 
These roughly manufactured, spurious snipe are, however, 
wonderfully delusive, and at a short distance cannot be dis¬ 
tinguished from a flock of living birds. As soon as the pre¬ 
liminary preparations are made, the stools set out and the 
sportsman hidden, the latter expects the former to “open 
the ball”—that is, a single bird say, already perhaps having 
seen all his sisters, his cousins and his aunts killed by similar 
ambush and trickery, is wending his solitary way to the fair 
sandbanks of the South. He catches sight of the false pre¬ 
sentments, joy fills his heart—which has learned nothing by 
experience—and in them sees possibly his lost kindred. He 
calls aloud ; the false friends or relations seem to answer, 
though their voices are hoarse—from wet feet and cold, 
doubtless. 
Unsuspiciously he drops from the clouds; and with out¬ 
stretched neck and expanded wings he sails gracefully and 
confidingly up to the blind. There is a flash of lightning 
and a roar of thunder, and his body lies dead upon the sand, 
while his soul has gone to the “ Happy Hunting Grounds of 
the Hereafter,” to be murdered over and over again through 
all eternity; for if there are Happy Hunting Grounds, there 
must inevitably be hapless game to hunt. A flock, likewise, 
comes in the same way, only crowding and jostling one an¬ 
other and hurrying to be first in at the death; and then the 
sportsman’s happiness is supreme, and his art tested to its 
utmost, for then he can only be said-to have justified himself 
if he shall have killed two or more with the first barrel, as 
they are crowding and crossing one another ; and at least one 
with his second barrel. 
As much depends on the sportsman’s skill in whistling a 
correct and loud imitation, as in his accuracy and rapidity 
of aim. The variety of species is very great. Among the 
ordinary ones will be found the following, some still retain¬ 
ing their quaint Indian names: The Sickle-bill curlew, a 
large, brown bird, with a curved bill, which is occasionally 
eleven inches long; the Marlin, another brown bird, with a 
bill nearly straight, in fact bent slightly upward toward the 
point; the Jack curlew, like the sickle bill, but smaller; the 
