. Birds that hunt and are hunted; life histories of one hundred and seventy birds of prey, game birds and water fowls . se, before starting to run. When they squat andhide behind tufts of beach grass, it takes sharp eyes to detectbirds from sand. But even without apparent alarm, the scattered birds often riseas if summoned by some invisible and inaudible captain, andfly close along the ground, wheeling and dashing and skimmingin beautiful and intricate evolutions. Such a flock offers all tooeasy a side shot. In the good old days of carnage that areresponsible for the scarcity of this fine game
. Birds that hunt and are hunted; life histories of one hundred and seventy birds of prey, game birds and water fowls . se, before starting to run. When they squat andhide behind tufts of beach grass, it takes sharp eyes to detectbirds from sand. But even without apparent alarm, the scattered birds often riseas if summoned by some invisible and inaudible captain, andfly close along the ground, wheeling and dashing and skimmingin beautiful and intricate evolutions. Such a flock offers all tooeasy a side shot. In the good old days of carnage that areresponsible for the scarcity of this fine game bird to-day, it oftenrained plover when the gunners were abroad. This latter phrasesuggests the query: What connection of ideas is there betweenpluvia (rain) and plover derived from that word ? An earlyFrench writer, Belon (1555), speaking of the European species, ofcourse, says Pourcequon le prend mieux en temps plurieuxquen nulle autre saison ; but with us the birds are, if any-thing, wilder and less approachable in rainy weather than whenit is fine. Is it that their backs look as if they had been sprinkled 240. Plovers with rain drops ; or that they whistle more before storms, astheir German name (Regempfeifer) would imply; or that the eastwind that brings rain, blows flocks of these migrants in from sea ? Golden plovers, once so plentiful and confiding that they camenear enough to the plough for the farmers boy to strike and killwith his whip, were sold in the Chicago streets for fifty cents ahundred within the memory of many, and those not the oldestinhabitants. Dead birds propped up with sticks when thewooden decoys from city shops were not available ; a dried pearattling about in a hollow reed to imitate the mellow coodle, coodle,coodle of the plovers melodious call, allured the birds within easyrange of every farm hands antediluvian musket. Plovers visits depend much on weather, a clear, fine dayinviting a long, unbroken flight far out at sea during the autumnmigration
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Keywords: ., book, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectuplandgamebirds
