To our native neighbours this
appeared an astonishingly large collection of weapons, for in those
days they possessed no fire-arm except, in some rare instances, a
carbine, brought home by a runaway soldier and kept concealed lest the
authorities should get wind of it.
As the next best thing to doing the shooting myself, I attended my
brother in his expeditions, to hold his horse or to pick up and carry
the birds, and was deeply grateful to him for allowing me to serve him
in this humble capacity. We had some exciting adventures together. One
summer day he came rushing home to get his gun, having just seen an
immense flock of golden plover come down at a spot a mile or so from
home. With his gun and a sack to put the birds in, he mounted his
pony, I with him, as our ponies were accustomed to carry two and even
three at a pinch. We found the flock where he had seen it alight -
thousands of birds evenly scattered, running about busily feeding on
the wet level ground.
The bird I speak of is the _Charadrius dominicanca_, which breeds in
Arctic America and migrates in August and September to the plains of
La Plata and Patagonia, so that it travels about sixteen thousand
miles every year. In appearance it is so like our golden plover,
_Charadrius pluvialis_, as to be hardly distinguishable from it. The
birds were quite tame: all our wild birds were if anything too tame,
although not _shockingly_ so as Alexander Selkirk found them on his
island - the poet's, not the real Selkirk.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 291 of 355
Words from 80573 to 80848
of 98444
