The upland geese from the
Megellanic Straits that came to us in winter - that is to say, our
winter from May to August. And there were two swans, the black-necked,
which has black flesh and is unfit to eat, and the white or Coscoroba
Swan, as good a table bird as there is in the world. And oddly enough
this bird has been known to the natives as a "goose" since the
discovery of America, and now after three centuries our scientific
ornithologists have made the discovery that it is a link between the
geese and swans, but is more goose than swan. It is a beautiful white
bird, with bright red bill and legs, the wings tipped with black; and
has a loud musical cry of three notes, the last prolonged note with a
falling inflection.
These were the birds we sought after in winter; but we could shoot for
the table all the year round, for no sooner was it the duck's pairing
and breeding season than another bird-population from their breeding-
grounds in the arctic and sub-arctic regions came on the scene -
plover, sandpiper, godwit, curlew, whimbrel, - a host of northern
species that made the summerdried pampas their winter abode.
My first attempt at duck-shooting was made at a pond not many minutes'
walk from the house, where I found a pair of shoveller ducks, feeding
in their usual way in the shallow water with head and neck immersed.
Anxious not to fail in this first trial, I got down flat on the ground
and crawled snake-fashion for a distance of fifty or sixty yards,
until I was less than twenty yards from the birds, when I fired and
killed one.
That first duck was a great joy, and having succeeded so well with my
careful tactics, I continued in the same way, confining my attention
to pairs or small parties of three or four birds, when by patiently
creeping a long distance through the grass I could get very close to
them. In this way I shot teal, widgeon, pintail, shovellers, and
finally the noble rosy-bill, which was esteemed for the table above
all the others.
My brother, ambitious of a big bag, invariably went a distance from
home in quest of the large flocks, and despised my way of duck-
shooting; but it sometimes vexed him to find on his return from a
day's expedition that I had succeeded in getting as many birds as
himself without having gone much more than a mile from home.
Some months after I had started shooting I began to have trouble with
my beloved gun, owing to a weakness it had developed in its lock - one
of the infirmities incidental to age which the gunsmiths of Buenos
Ayres were never able to cure effectually.
