8 
FRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SPORTS. 
varieties of Curlew, Sandpiper, Plover, God wit, or Phalarope, 
sometimes as passing visitors, sometimes as denizens and owners 
of the soil, on which they build their nests, and raise their am¬ 
phibious young. 
The greater portion of these winter on the shores of the South¬ 
ern States, and many in countries yet to the south of these, and 
during the spring and summer, pass eastward and northward 
along the coasts of the Atlantic, to their breeding places in the 
extreme North, on the cold shores of Labrador, returning thence 
in autumn to the milder climates of Florida, and the warm 
waters of the Gulf of Mexico. 
The great tract of shallow, land-locked water, which lies 
along almost the whole southern side of Long Island, impro¬ 
perly called the Great South Bay, for it is rather a lagoon than 
a bay, “ occupying a distance of seventy miles uninterrupted in¬ 
land navigation,” bounded on the south by the shingle beach 
and sand hills, which divide it from the open Atlantic, and on 
the north by the vast range of salt meadows, which form the 
margin of the island, is the resort of countless flocks of aquatic 
fowl of every description, and is especially the paradise of gun¬ 
ners. The marshy shores of South-western Jersey, the broad 
embouchure of the Delaware, the many beautiful streams which 
flow together into the Bay of the Chesapeake, the inlets of Albe¬ 
marle and Pamlico Sounds, the tepid waters of Florida, the 
great bay of Mobile, and the sea-lakes Borgne and Pontchar- 
train, at the mouths of the Mississippi, all abound in their season 
with these aquatic myriads; but in none, perchance, are they 
more systematically and regularly pursued, than in the waters 
of Long Island. The mode of pursuing and taking them, is 
nearly the same everywhere, as they, like all species of wild 
fowl, must be taken by stratagem, and from ambush, not by 
open pursuit. 
The tribes and varieties of these birds are so numerous, that 
to attempt a detailed account or description of them all, would 
far exceed the possible limits of such a work as this, and would 
cause it to assume the character, to which it does not aspire, of 
