JAN. 20, 1906.] 
HORES SF AND STREAM. 

Whistling «Wings. 
Nature has a gamut of pleasant sounds for 
all her lovers. The rustling of the corn and the 
trees is dear to the summer loiterer; the poet 
loves to hear the music of cascades, and the 
waves rippling on the beach, and the thousand 
tiny noises of wood and fields; the lover is fond 
of wind in the pines, and the sad voice of the 
night-bird high in air, for his happiness reacts 
upon his thoughts, and there is a luxury to 
him in contemplating abstractly mournful things, 
and even the man who goes to nature merely 
for rest, and loves her for her restfulness, finds 
ae in the drowsy choirs of meadow and 
pon 
But above all others, the sportsman rejoices 
in the sounds of nature. He is familiar with 
them all, and loves them all. He is, if we may 
so express it, the true natural cosmopolitan. 
His heart is open to all the influences and pleas- 
ures which spring from communion with the 
great nature-spirit. His out-door life introduces 
him to all the different phases of nature. In 
certain moods, he can be a poet, and hear the 
tiny voices which the actual poet alone is able 
to reproduce. Again, he may be a loiterer, or 
a lover, charmed with the music of the nestling 
grain, or filled with melancholy gladness at the 
soughing of the pines. 
But there are certain sounds in nature which 
are to the sportsman as a sportsman distinctively 
pleasurable. Among these, none is so charac- 
teristic of the enjoyment he derives in his 
rambles by woodland, field and stream as the 
sound of whistling wings. As the art of shoot- 
ing on the wing is by far the finest, the most 
difficult, the most romantic and picturesque of 
all the sportsman’s accomplishments, so its at- 
tendant circumistances are most enjoyably im- 
pressed upon his mind. Here is a distinct de- 
partment of literature and of art devoted en- 
tirely to the attractiveness of field sports; and 
while all he charm of the reality cannot be re- 
produced, yet the pleasant experience is so 
vividly suggested as to amount almost to reality. 
The romance of shooting on the wing is chiefly 
the subject of these pictures of pen and pencil; 
and what pleasure a fine painting or engraving 
or description of some familiar experience of 
the sort gives to every true sportsman! The 
representation may be beautiful in itself, and so 
of pleasure to others, but to the sportsman it 
has a beauty and a charm apart from its mere 
technical merits. It calls up the vivid and ever- 
dear reality. 
I love to look at a help -pictured sporting 
scene, and live over my own experiences 
ot | 
whistling wings, and daring shots and floating | 
feathers. I have in mind now a friend’s noble 
water-coloring, which represents a grouse shoot- 
ing scene. 
in quivering repose. How plainly I can hear 
the music of those rapid wings. One of the 
noble birds will soon be beating his death 
throes on the leafy ground, for his fallen head 
and drooping legs show that the line of smoke 
leaping from the sportsman’s gun is not in 
vain. JI shall never cease to wonder whether 
that canvas-coated friend of mine seized his 
splendid opportunity and made a “double.” If 
so, he is worthy of the artist’s skill and worthy 
the admiration of every true sportsman. 
It is noticeable that nearly every game bird 
gives warning in some way when it rises from the 
ground or the water. Nearly all produce that 
thrilling sound, caused by the rapid beating of 
the wings, which is so closely associated in the 
sportsman’s mind with the delights of the field. 
The rest, like the snipe and the plover, utter 
a quick, startled cry, or a series of cries. The 
plover, which is a far-flyer, keeps up its plaintive 
note at intervals until it alights again, thus 
giving the sportsman opportunity to see and 
prepare for it as it comes skimming along the 
wide reaches of open beach. Few sportsmen, 
I think, realize how much of their pleasure and 
success in the field depends upon the sense of 
hearing. They realize it in part sometimes when 
a heavy wind is blowing, and the grouse, or the 
woodcock, or the duck gets upon the wing be- 
fore they hear the warning whistle of the wings. 
PauL PASTNoR. 
The dogs seem alive as they stand | 


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