Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/232

210 apparently too great a liberty, for several of the birds immediately flew up and mobbed him, driving him from tree to tree, until, wearied out by their persecution, the poor bird took wing, and, after circling round the heronry for a time, as thougb loth to quit his unfriendly relations, mounting high in the air, disappeared over the Arne peninsula in the direction of Wych and South Bay, a more retired situation than Wareham Channel. This bird continued to resort to the harbour for a fortnight or more, but owing to the way in which the other birds mobbed him, or to natural wildness, finally departed, experiencing on one occasion a narrow escape from a pound and a half of bullets fired from a huge punt-gun! A more effectual shot at Spoonbills than that, however, was once made here by a gunner named Matthews. He fired his punt-gun at about fifteen of these birds on Patchin's Point and killed no less than five, for which he got, I believe, ten shillings a-piece—a good day's work for him. Another gunner named Orchard shot one, took it home and ate it. He told me that it was a very good bird, only rather too fat. A Spoonbill made its appearance here in June, 1877, the men about Wareham Bay insisting that it was the same bird that had come the year before. I did not happen to see it, but the one I saw was an immature bird with little or no crest. I forget the exact date of Matthews killing the five, but it was a good many years since—a dozen at least I should say. Most of the gunners here are acquainted with this bird, which shows that its appearance is tolerably frequent.— (Westport, Wareham).

—There are two ways in which Golden Plover may be shot singly in the low-lying fields adjoining the Firth of Forth, or upon the mud-flats beyond the sea-wall. Both ways afford beautiful shooting—none prettier or more satisfactory. The tide along our coast, on receding, leaves a vast extent of mud-flat, or "slink," as it is locally named. When the tide returns it washes up against the seawall in spring-tides, or in neap-tides leaves a strip of greater or lesser width along shore of mud and shells, with, at certain points, patches or corners of salt marsh. About a gun-shot from the sea-wall, and close to the mouth of the River Avon, which separates Stirlingshire from Linlithgow, is a bank of sand and cockle-shells, which is only covered during unusually high tides. For ordinary shore-shooting from this bank the September tides are the most productive. When the tide is at the full, Plovers are frequenting the great open stretches of ploughed "carse-land" which extends for miles in a westerly and northerly direction reaching to Falkirk and Stirling. When the wind is southerly, or south-west, or north-west, they congregate at localities further inland; when easterly or northerly they prefer the fields nearer the sea-wall, although exceptions do occur to the above rule. At this time the shore-shooter must leave the sand-bank and the "slink," and search