APPLETONS' JOURNAL.

SOME OF OUR GAME-BIRDS.

BY MAURICE THOMPSON.

HE wild-goose, a name very strangely applied | gregates at many places on the coast and in the in

The a namely of the species, is the terior of the United States, especially in spring and

seen in spring and autumn sweeping southward or | ber. To illustrate the powerful vitality of this bird northward, their clanging voices falling to the ears of man mellowed almost into musical softness. Wherever any considerable water-course flows in a direction nearly approaching a north-and-south line, the migrating flocks of these giant birds follow the general course of the stream in their flight. The wild-goose will probably never become extinct, from the fact that it nests and rears its young in the inaccessible polar regions, while it is also endowed with instincts of self-preservation most baffling to its enemies. It is a long-lived, hardy, plucky bird, affording the sportsman an ample field in which to display his craft and skill. When not too old, its flesh is peculiarly juicy, tender, and well-flavored. It conDECEMBER, 1876. VOL. I.--31

let me record an incident of a week's shooting on the Kankakee. From the second-story window of a shooting-lodge I fired at a flock of geese passing over, and succeeded in knocking one of the birds off his wings. He fell hard on a sheet of ice formed over a lagoon, and lay for some seconds as if quite dead, but before I could descend and secure him he got on his feet, and began to run at a lively gait. One of my fellow-sportsmen, seeing my game about to escape, let go right and left at it at short range, knocking it over, and fairly stripping its back of feathers, but it immediately recovered again, and made off with great energy. The bird was shot six times before it was secured. The guns used were

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had in those places where the corn has been cut | periwinkles, water-snails, and small shell-fish, they and "shocked." The gunner secretes himself in the vicinity of a feeding flock of geese by entering one of these shocks and sending an assistant by a wide circuit to drive the game to him. By this method I have killed many with both gun and long-bow. It is difficult to kill a goose with a shot-gun when the bird's breast is presented, but no coating of feathers can turn a well-sent arrow. In some of our Atlantic coast-regions great numbers of geese are killed by professional hunters for the city markets, and no game finds a readier sale at good prices.

Among aquatic game-birds, the wood-duck may be next mentioned as a general favorite with sportsmen. He is the most beautiful in outline, plumage, and bearing, of all our ducks. Though small, he is stately, and nothing can exceed in brilliancy of coloring, and happy contrast of gay tints, his oddlyblended feathers from crest to tail. The habits of this bird are peculiar. Its nest is built in the hollow of a tree, like that of the woodpecker, and its young crawl out from their home and tumble to the ground without injury before they can fly, and are led away to some adjacent pond or stream, where they immediately proceed to care for themselves, asking nothing further of their parents than mere attendance and companionship. I have killed these birds at many points between Lower Florida and Lake Michigan. Their food is various, which accounts for the great difference in the flavor of their flesh when

are unsuited to a discriminating palate. No bird affords better sport. When flushed, it springs into the air like a quail, and darts away with a loud sound of wings. You must be no poke-shot to cover it, or it escapes by plunging behind any cover that offers. In September and October all the thousands of little lakes and ponds scattered over Northern and Middle Indiana teem with rafts of wood-duck, and very often one or two teal may be seen in the midst of a flock, apparently quite welcome and happy. One singular habit of this bird I do not recollect seeing mentioned by any writer. When sorely wounded, it will dive under any floating substance, ice, drift-wood, or matted leaves or roots, and there drown rather than be captured. For shooting with my own favorite weapon, the long-bow, the wood-duck presents many "fine points." The sportsman, if at all crafty and light of foot, may, by taking advantage of the cover offered by a clump of papaw-bushes or a fallen treetop, get within twenty or thirty yards of his birds without attracting their notice, and if his arrows be skillfully delivered he may knock over two or three before the flock takes fright and rises. The "elbowponds" of the West, so called from being grown up full of a kind of aquatic bush called elbow or buttonball, are the favorite resort of wood-ducks with their broods, hatched in the hollows of the trees during the summer months, and it is at the cost of the most careful manoeuvring and watchfulness that their

habits can then be observed. The old birds are quick for sure aim, and I consider it more luck than ever alert, and the young ones hide beyond any skill to cut a bird down without getting your gun chance of discovery at the slightest hint of danger. to your face. Occasionally a spot may be found Several kinds of hawks and the big-horned owl prey where at twilight woodcock fly over, going to their upon the wood-duck, and I have often found where feeding-grounds, affording a few minutes of rapid a raccoon or an opossum had dined on one, leaving a shooting; but it is a stretch of good-humored fancy heap of brilliant feathers as evidence of his delicious to call such business sport. The best woodcockrepast. I once saw a tall, lean, red fox galloping gunning I ever had was in a large semi-marshy sedgethrough an open forest with a wood-duck fluttering field in Georgia, whither I had gone to shoot plover. in his mouth. I started a dog after him, but-forgive My dog, an old, slow pointer, came to a stand, as, I the comparison-it was like starting a snail after supposed, on a quail which I had seen alight near lightning. The fox and the bird slipped from my the spot, but when I got the bird up it was a woodsight like a shadow in a dream, one to its lair to sleep cock. The sedge was in tufts about waist-high, and on a good supper, the other to the paradise of birds. nothing else but a few persimmon-bushes offered any The woodcock is a game-bird highly prized by flight-cover. I got up one after another until I sportsmen and epicures. The peculiarity of its hab-killed a heavy bag. Not one in all the field escaped its, and the fact that year by year it approaches extermination, make it an object of great interest, too, to the naturalist. You will find a solitary bird starting at your feet and whirring up through the air from some moist spot in a brushy wood. Your eye will scarcely be able to follow its short, zigzag flight to where it drops into cover. Its motions are those of a nocturnal bird. Its wings are almost soundless, and it whips about in its flight as if its dull black eyes would serve it better in the dark. It feeds mostly by night, boring with its long, flexible bill in moist earth, guided to its prey by a fine sense of smell. I have seen it in every State from Florida to Michigan. Woodcock-shooting is excellent sport

me. I once had an excellent opportunity of watching the manoeuvres of a woodcock while feeding. I was lying under some maple-bushes on the bank of a pond, my shot-gun to the right of me, and my longbow to the left. It was about the 1st of May, I think, and I was in ambush for some buffle-heads I had noticed coming into the pond, late stragglers from the north-going flocks. All about me the shadows of the maple-thicket were duskier than ordinary twilight, and the ground was soft and damp. While I lay thus waiting for an assistant to slowly make his way round the pond and drive the ducks to me, a slight rustling directed my eyes to a woodcock running swiftly in elliptical lines on a small, almost

stopped, stiffened its legs like stilts, and began tilting up and down, piercing the soft loam with its bill to the depth of two inches at each movement. It drew forth worms and semi-aquatic insects, which it devoured with lively show of delight. After a few successful borings in this way, it again began its strange curvilinear running, which lasted for a few seconds, and ended in a repetition of the feeding process, then again the running, and so on till some slight movement on my part frightened it, whereupon it darted into a patch of water-grass, and I saw it no more. To my taste, the woodcock, served with currant-jelly, is the most toothsome of all the wild game-flavored birds. Whenever I can take home a brace I feel that my tramp has not been in vain.

tufts of water-sedge. I have found excellent shooting, however, in fallow fields, or old corn-stubble plats whose surface was badly drained. With a welltrained dog, a No. 12 breech-loader gun, and a good meadow, the sportsman, on a hazy, mellow April day, may bag a hundred snipe. If the wind is rather strong, your dog will have some difficulty, and half your shots will be hasty ones at long range. A gentle draught from the south is best weather. While the snipe generally takes wing rather beyond desirable flushing distance, it sometimes lies very close and hard, having to be kicked out of the grass. This makes shooting doubtful, and the sport very exciting. When the bird jumps up at your toes, whirls over on the wind, and wriggles off like a fish in a swift shoal, you make no deliberate, graceful The American snipe, while not so fine a table- shots. Your gun goes to your shoulder on a skew,

bird as the woodcock, offers much better sport. Indeed, a good broad meadow of snipe has but one thing to surpass it in the sportsman's estimation, namely, a field of low cover with plenty of quail. The snipe's manner of feeding is much like that of the woodcock, and in shape and plumage he somewhat resembles the latter. He is difficult to shoot till one has learned his ways. Jumping against the wind as he rises, he generally flies with a corkscrew motion very bewildering to the novice. His cry-" Scaip, scaip!" given out as he leaves the grass -is delightful music to the cultured sportsman. I have killed snipe from North to South wherever there are meadows suited to their feeding. They drop down upon us in spring and fall, and remain just long enough to give us our fill of sport. You will find them in marshy flats where little ponds or puddles abound in the midst of reaches of rush-grass and

and you fire on a half-turn in a cramped position. If you hit your bird, you hit it hard at close range, cutting it up badly, or, after a poke-shot, you knock it down, winged only, beyond ordinary killing distance. This bird is as swift of foot as of wing, and, when not instantly killed, generally escapes though mortally wounded. When shot through the heart I have known it to rise perpendicularly till it disappeared from sight, then presently fall to earth dead. One dropped at my feet from such a flight once, greatly to my astonishment, some minutes after I had shot it. The snipe breeds in the almost interminable swamps and marshes of the semi-boreal regions, goes south in April, stopping along his way, and returns in September and October, straggling and apparently reluctant to leave our States.

I have spoken of the wood-duck as, of all wildducks, the sportsman's favorite; but twenty other