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                                  The
                       Celebrated Sporting Works
                                  OF
                         ROBERT B. ROOSEVELT.

                                  I.

                      The Game Fish of the North

                                  II.

                           Superior Fishing.

                                 III.

                     The Game Birds of the North.

              ⁂ _All published uniform with this volume,
                handsomely bound in cloth, price $2.00.
                     Sent free by mail on receipt
                              of price_,

                                  BY

                         Carleton, Publisher,
                               New York.




                                  THE
                              GAME-BIRDS
                                OF THE
                COASTS AND LAKES OF THE NORTHERN STATES
                              OF AMERICA.

          A FULL ACCOUNT OF THE SPORTING ALONG OUR SEASHORES
                 AND INLAND WATERS, WITH A COMPARISON
                    OF THE MERITS OF BREECH-LOADERS
                          AND MUZZLE-LOADERS.

                        BY ROBERT B. ROOSEVELT,
    AUTHOR OF “THE GAME-FISH OF NORTH AMERICA,” “SUPERIOR FISHING,”
                      “COUNTRY LIFE,” ETC., ETC.

                               NEW YORK:
                 _Carleton, Publisher, 413 Broadway._
                             M DCCC LXVI.


      Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by

                           GEO. W. CARLETON,

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the
                    Southern District of New York.

                    THE NEW YORK PRINTING COMPANY,
                    _81, 83, and 85 Centre Street_,
                               NEW YORK.




CONTENTS.


                                                                    PAGE


 CHAPTER I.

 Game of Ancient and Modern Days.--Its Protection and Importance.--The
 proper Shooting Seasons.--The Impolicy of using Batteries and
 Pivot-Guns.                                                           7


 CHAPTER II.

 Guns and Gunnery.--Breech-loaders compared with Muzzle-loaders.--A
 Sharp Review of the “Dead Shot.”--The Field Trial.                   27


 CHAPTER III.

 Bay-snipe Shooting.--The Birds, their Habits, Peculiarities, and
 places of Resort.--Stools and Whistles.--Dress and Implements
 appropriate to their pursuit.--Their Names and Mode of Capture.      66


 CHAPTER IV.

 The New Jersey Coast.--Jersey Girls and their pleasant ways.--The
 peculiarities of Bay-snipe further elucidated.--Mosquitoes
 rampant.--Good Shooting and “Fancy” Sport.--Shipwrecks and
 Ghosts.                                                              98


 CHAPTER V.

 Bay-Birds.--Particular Descriptions and Scientific Characteristics.--A
 Complete Account of each Variety.                140


 CHAPTER VI.

 Montauk Point.--American Golden Plover or Frost-Bird.--A True Story
 of Three Thousand in a Flock.--Lester’s Tavern.--Good Eating, Fine
 Fishing, and Splendid Shooting.--The Nepeague Beach.                178


 CHAPTER VII.

 Rail and Rail-Shooting.--Seasons, Localities, and Incidents of
 Sport.--Use of Breech-loader or Muzzle-loader.--Equipment.          190


 CHAPTER VIII.

 Wild-Fowl Shooting.--General Directions, from Boats, Blinds, or
 Batteries.--Retrievers from Baltimore and Newfoundland.--Western
 Sport.--Equipment.                                                  205


 CHAPTER IX.

 Duck-Shooting on the Inland Lakes.--The Club House.--Practical Views
 of Practical Men.--Moral Tales.--A Day’s Fishing.--The Closing
 Scenes.                                                             219


 CHAPTER X.

 Suggestions to Sportsmen.--A Definition of the Term.--Crack
 Shots.--The Art of Shooting.--The Art of not Shooting.              271


 CHAPTER XI.

 Trap-Shooting.--Its Justification.--The Assistants.--Rules and
 Regulations.--Care of Birds.--Tricks of the Trade.                  288


 APPENDIX.

 Ornithological Descriptions of the Geese and Ducks, with Remarks and
 Suggestions on their Habits.--Rules of Trap-shooting.               303





THE GAME BIRDS OF THE NORTH.




CHAPTER I.

GAME AND ITS PROTECTION.


By the ancient law of 1 and 2 William IV., chap. 32, under the
designation of game, were included “hares, pheasants, partridges,
grouse, heath or moor game, black game, and bustards.”

Hunting and hawking date back to the earliest days of knight-errantry,
when parties of cavaliers and ladies fair, mounted on their mettlesome
steeds caparisoned with all the skill of the cunning artificers of those
days, pursued certain birds of the air with the falcon, and followed the
royal stag through the well preserved and extensive forests with packs
of hounds. The term game, therefore, had an early significance and
positive application, but was confined to the creatures pursued in one
or the other of these two modes.

The gun was first used for the shooting of feathered game in the early
part of the eighteenth century; it soon became the favorite implement of
the sportsman, and was brought into use, not only against the birds,
but the beasts, of game. The huntsman no longer depends upon his brave
dog and cloth-yard shaft, but upon his own powers of endurance and of
marksmanship. Instead of watching the savage falcon strike his prey far
up in the heavens, he follows his high-bred setters, till their
wonderful natural instinct betrays to him the presence of the game.

Where he once rode after the yelping pack, sounding the merry notes of
his bugle horn, he now climbs and crawls laboriously, until he brings
the wary stag within range of the deadly rifle. No more brilliant
parties of lovely dames and gallant men, chatting merrily on the
incidents of the day, ride gaily decked steeds; no more the luxury of
the beautiful faces and pleasant companionship of the gentler sex is to
be enjoyed; the ladies of modern times--except in England, where they
occasionally follow foxes, which are rather vermin than game--preferring
the excitement of ball-room flirtations to outdoor sports and pleasures,
take no part in the pursuits of the chase.

Together with the change in the mode of capturing game, comes a
necessity for a change in its former restricted meaning. Who would think
of not including among game birds, the gamest of them all--the
magnificent woodcock; nor the stylish English snipe, nor even possibly
the brave little quail--unless he can be scientifically proved to be a
partridge--which is at least doubtful! Migratory birds were not included
in the sacred list, and the quail in England, as the woodcock and snipe
of both England and America, are migratory, although the mere temporary
character of their residence does not, in our view, at all alter the
nature of their claims. The larger European woodcock is by no means so
delicious or highly flavored a bird as our yellow-breasted, round-eyed
beauty, and is much scarcer; while the foreign quail, on the other hand,
is smaller than ours, and in southern Europe is found in vast flocks;
but both are entitled to high rank among modern sportsmen.

The term Game Birds, therefore, should be, and has been by general
consent, greatly extended in its application, and applied to all the
numerous species which, whether migratory or not, are killed not alone
for the market, but for sport; and which are followed on the stubble
fields, in brown November, with the strong-limbed and keen-nosed setter,
or shot from blind in scorching August; slain from battery in freezing
December, or chased in a boat, or misled by decoys. All wild birds that
furnish sport as well as profit are therefore game; and the gentle
dowitchers along our sea-coast, lured to the deceitful stools, are as
much entitled to the name as the stately ruffed grouse of our wild
woods, or the royal turkey of the far west.

To constitute a legitimate object of true sport, the bird must be
habitually shot on the wing, and the greater the skill required in its
capture, the higher its rank. The turkey, therefore, although frequently
killed on the wing, is more a game bird by sufferance than by right, and
partly from his gastronomic as well as from his other qualities. Under
this classification, then, we must include, not merely the ruffed and
pinnated grouse, which, although the only species in our country coming
within the ancient definition, furnish far less sport than many other
varieties, but woodcock, snipe, quail, geese, ducks, bay birds, plover,
and rail; without regard to the fact that all, except the quail, are
migratory, and most were unknown to our British ancestry. It has been
even supposed that the quail, in parts of our country free from deep
rivers and impassable barriers, are also in a measure migratory; but
this has no other foundation than their habit of wandering from place to
place in search of food, and collecting late in the season, as they will
do where they are numerous and undisturbed in large packs.

To the protection of this vast variety of game it is the sportsman’s
duty to address himself, in spite of the opposition of the market-man
and restaurateur, the mean-spirited poaching of the pot-hunter, and the
lukewarmness of the farmer. The latter can be enlisted in the cause; he
has indirectly the objects of the sportsman at heart; and with proper
enlightenment will assist, not merely to preserve his fields from
ruthless injury, but to save from destruction his friends the
song-birds.

As the true sportsman turns his attention only to legitimate sport,
destroying those birds that are but little if at all useful to the
farmer; and as at the same time, out of gratitude for the kindness with
which the latter generally receives him, he is careful never to invade
the high grass or the ripening grain--so also, from his innate love of
nature, and of everything that makes nature more beautiful, he spares
and defends the warblers of the woods and the innocent worm-devourers
that stand guardian over the trees and crops. The smaller birds destroy
immense numbers of worms; cedar-birds have been known to eat hundreds of
caterpillars, and in this city have cleared the public squares in a
morning’s visit of the disgusting measuring-worms, that were hanging by
thousands pendent from the branches. And who has not heard the
“woodpecker tapping” all day long in pursuit of his prey?

With the barbarous and senseless destruction of our small birds, the
ravages of the worms have augmented, until we hear from all the
densely-settled portions of the country loud complaints of their
attacks. Peach-trees perish; cherries are no longer the beautiful fruit
they once were; apples are disfigured, and plums have almost ceased to
exist. Worms appear upon every vegetable thing; the borers dig their way
beneath the bark of the trunk and cut long alleys through the wood;
weevils pierce the grain and eat out its pith; the leaf-eaters of
various sorts punch out the delicate membrane by individual effort; or
collecting in bodies, throw their nets, like a spider-web, over the
branches, and by combined attacks deliberately devour every leaf. While
these species are at work openly and in full sight, others are at the
roots digging and destroying and multiplying; until the tree that at
first gave evidence of hardiness and promise of long utility to man,
pauses in its growth, becomes delicate, fades, and finally dies.

The destruction of these vermicular pests is a question of life or death
to the farmer. He may attempt it either with his own labor, by tarring
his trees, fastening obstructions on the trunks, or by killing
individuals; or he may have it done for him, free of expense, by
innumerable flocks of the denizens of the air. The increase of worms
must be stopped; the means of doing so is a question of serious public
concern, and none have yet been invented so effectual as the natural
course--the restoration of the equipoise of nature. It is true that the
robin, as we call him, now and then steals a cherry, and has been blamed
as though he were nothing more than a cherry-thief; but surely we can
spare him a little fruit for his dessert, when we remember that his meal
has been composed mainly of the deadly enemies of that very fruit!
Swallows are accused of breeding lice, which, if true, would not be a
serious charge, considering that their nests are generally in the
loftiest and least accessible corner they can find; but when we consider
how many millions of noxious flies and poisonous mosquitoes they
destroy, how they hover over the swamps and meadows for this especial
purpose, and how much annoyance their labors save to human kind, we owe
them gratitude instead of abuse.

Every tribe of birds has its allotted part to play; and if destroyed,
not only will its pleasant songs and bright feathers, gleaming amid the
green leaves, be missed, but some species of bug or insect, some
disgusting caterpillar or injurious fly, will escape well merited
destruction, and increasingly visit upon man the punishment of his
cruelty and folly.

The beautiful blue-birds, the numerous woodpeckers, the tiny wrens, the
graceful swallows and noisy martins, are sacred to the sportsman, and
constitute one great division of the creatures that he desires to
protect. It is true that enthusiastic foreigners, with cast-iron guns,
are seen peering into trees and lurking through the woods, proud of a
dirty bag half filled with robins, thrushes, and woodpeckers; but let no
ignorant reader confound such persons with sportsmen. Their satisfaction
in slaying one beautiful little warbler, as full of melody as it is bare
of meat, with a deadly charge of No. 4 shot; or in chasing from tree to
tree the agile red squirrel, who, with bushy tail erect, leaps from one
limb to another, emulating the very birds themselves with his agility,
is as unsportsmanlike as to kill a cheeping quail, that, struggling from
the thick weeds in September before the pointer’s nose, with feeble
wings, skirts the low brush; or to murder the brooding woodcock, that
flutters up before the dog in June, and, with holy maternal instinct,
endeavours to lead the pursuer from her infant brood.

From such acts the veritable sportsman turns with horror; they are
cruelty--the slaughter of what is useless for food, or what, by its
death, will produce misery to others; and no persons in the community
have done more to repress this wantonness of destruction than the
Sportsmen’s Clubs. It was at their request that the killing of
song-birds was prohibited altogether; and they are the most earnest to
restrict the times of lawful sport to such periods as will not, by any
possibility, permit its being followed during the season of incubation.

Not alone by obtaining the passage of appropriate laws and their
vigorous enforcement, have these clubs effected a great reform; but by
their personal example and social influence, often, too, at considerable
loss to themselves. For while the poacher, taking the chance of a legal
conviction as an accident of business, and but a slight reduction of his
unlawful profits, anticipates the appointed time, true sportsmen,
restrained by a feeling of honor and self-respect, although they know
that the birds are being killed daily in defiance of the statute, wait
till the lawful day arrives, and thus often, especially in woodcock
shooting, sacrifice their entire season’s sport for a principle.

This honorable spirit, if encouraged and extended, is the best
protection for song-birds and game that can be had. The laws are only
necessary to deter those who are dead to honor and decency, and to fix
the proper times--which ought to be uniform throughout our entire
country. But to enforce them requires the assistance of public opinion.
Every encouragement should be given to sportsmen’s associations. The
absurd prejudice that has originated from confounding them with a very
different class of the community should be overcome, and their efforts
to have good laws passed, and to make them effectual, should be
sustained. The vulgar idea, that confounds laws for the protection of
the wild creatures of wood, meadow, lake, and stream, with the monstrous
game-laws of olden time--that made killing a hare more criminal than
killing a man--should be corrected.

In this country, where every man is expected to be a sort of
volunteer-policeman, all should unite in enforcing the laws; and then,
in spite of the irrepressible obstinacy of the German enthusiast, and
the mean cunning of the sneaking poacher, our cities would soon be rid
of the disgusting worms that make their trees hideous, our farms
protected from the devastations of the curculio, the weevil, the borer,
and the army-worm; the country would once more be populated with its
native feathered game, and our fields