approach of the hardy, swift-flying, and thickly-plumaged birds that are to furnish him his afternoon's sport. From across the sand ridge behind him, comes the soothing roar of the surf, while to counteract the effects of the August sun, the coolest of ocean breezes sweeps along the shore, and gently rustles the sprays of seaweed which have been festooned about the shooting blind, to conceal the form of the shooter from the quick eye of the wary feathered ranger.

The term "shore bird" is applied to the almost endless variety of migrating birds which breed in the far North during the month of June, and return almost immediately after the breeding season to the South Atlantic and Pacific Islands. Largely for the sake of convenience, and partly through habit, the shore bird is known to the gunner by names that would be very apt to puzzle the naturalist and ornithologist. To the gunner, the different members of the family of shore birds are known as red-breasted plover, curlew, brown back, summer and winter yellow leg, sanderling, beetle head, willet, ring neck, ox-eye, and so on, down to the ubiquitous peep, which at almost all points along the shore is as numerous as the English sparrow in the streets of our large cities The birds possess distinctly a game bird's plumage, and but for the length of leg and bill, would, to the inexperienced sportsman, present a marked similarity in appearance to many species of upland game birds. The larger varieties are fair eating, but a knowledge of just how to prepare them for the table is necessary to make the average shore bird palatable to any one not a wellseasoned and experienced sportsman. It is unquestionably for the sport, rather than the eating, that the gunner seeks the haunts of the shore bird.

By many sportsmen, shore bird shooting has been termed a lazy

A

man's pastime, but an experienced shore bird shooter knows that while the work of tramping, attendant upon field shooting, is done away with when after shore birds, the man who would secure a good bag of them must be not only constantly upon the alert, but unusually quick of eye, and a more than ordinarily good wing shot. While almost the entire family of shore birds are readily decoyed, unless panic-stricken. by a battery of gunners that they may have inadvertently run into, many and many a bird has met his fate, in the experience of the writer, by responding to the the cleverlyimitated call of the gunner. season's experience and a little practice will familiarize almost any one with the distinctive cries of the birds, and will enable the shooter to distinguish the species almost as far away as he can distinguish the moving forms of the birds. It is really amusing at times to watch the movements of a brace of "beetle heads," for instance, who may happen along the shore, bound, judging from the swiftness of their flight, for some far distant point. As the gunner sees them approaching, and imitates the call, the birds will swerve slightly from their course, hesitate, and then proceed as though having given up all thought of joining the imaginary mate at the water's edge. Perhaps, when the gunner has almost arrived at the conclusion that all chance for a shot is gone, the birds will, if the call is continued, circle about, and come right up to the decoys.

Of course, under such conditions, a gunner may burn a great deal of powder between the hours of the incoming and the ebb tides, and if he does not take home a fat bag of birds, it is due either to his inexperience as a caller, or to his bad marksmanship

Shore birds, with the exception of the smaller varieties, almost invariably follow the water line; it is good

usage, therefore, to take one's position in the box perhaps an hour before the flood tide commences, and the water rising, forces the birds shoreward as they feed on the edge of the incoming tide. When the water has reached the box it is then advisable for the gunner to take in his decoys and retreat to his blind, which may be from 100 to 200 yards further shoreward and at the edge of the sand dunes up to which the water reaches at the highest point of the tide. Here he enjoys excellent shooting, while the high tide lasts, and even for an hour afterward, as it recedes.

Confining our references to the Atlantic coast, there are any number of localities whereat the lover of shore bird shooting may find excellent sport and good accommodations. All along the

chimneys and large cities is so constantly prevalent, that the birds fight shy of the coast for several hundred miles, refusing to stop for more than the merest bite of lunch, and flying almost constantly until the wilder and more unsettled regions of the south Atlantic coast has been reached. This he begins to strike at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, and it is said that the best of this kind of shooting to be had in the east, is

coast of Maine and setts, and particularly along the south shore of Long Island, the best shore bird shooting of the North Atlantic coast is to be had. After leaving Long Island, however, there is little shore bird shooting to be enjoyed, until the coast of the Carolinas is reached. This is due to the fact that from New York southward, until the coast of Maryland has been passed, the district is so thickly settled, and the smoke from factory

from Cape Charles and Cape Henry southward to the extreme end of the Florida coast.

in

The northern flight of the shore bird takes place April and May, when the birds are in full flight to their northern breeding grounds in the fardistant regions. of Baffin Bay, and the great district north of Hudson Bay. How much

farther north they go, no one has attempted to say, authentically. That they go for breeding purposes, one does not have to go further north than the New England coast to determine, for the reason that the south bound flight, which begins about July 1, consists almost entirely of old birds. With the coming of September, however, there are few if any old birds among the thousands that range along the shore. All are are young birds, and it is then perhaps that the

largest bags are taken.

Fair weather is not as a rule favorable weather for shore bird shooting, the shore bird seeming to be putting in his best efforts to leave as many miles as possible behind him, under fair weather conditions.

When the weather is

thick and foggy, however, with a strong southeast wind on the Atlantic shore, the shore bird shooter burns the most powder, for the birds, tired out by the opposing winds and urged by instinct to keep near the shore, rather than to plough their way blindly through the thickening fogs, are present upon their feeding grounds in large numbers.

For the New York gunner, the south shore of Long Island, and some portions of the Jersey coast, notably Barnegat Bay, are the most easily accessible. The Jersey coast, however, for reasons above given, is rather fought shy of by the migrating bird. The south shore of Long Island suits him better. This coast, for many miles, is but thinly settled, and the miles upon miles of beach along the sand dunes that form the breakwater to Long Island, afford them excellent feeding grounds. While the smoke of the factory, however, is not present on the Long Island shore to frighten his shore-birdship, the easy accessibility of this coast from New York has made it the resort of hundreds of gunners during the season, and what the factory chimney has not accomplished, the batteries of the gunners have, to an almost equal extent. That section of coast which is furthest away from the thickly settled community, and which is therefore more difficult for the gunner to reach, offers, of course, the best opportunities and the best. results for the gunner. Consequently, the best shooting that is to be had between Chesapeake Bay and the coast of Maine, is unquestionably found along the sandy shores of Cape Cod, from Chatham on the southern extreme, to Provincetown on the north.

This is the first bit of shore that the birds strike after leaving the coast of Maine. Fighting shy of the thickly settled district south of Portsmouth and along the eastern Massachusetts coast, they take a direct line across the ocean to Cape Cod, and from there follow the shore right down to Rhode Island, thence striking across the sound to the extreme end of Long Island, and thus following the coast as far as Great South Bay.

When the writer, therefore, during the past Summer, determined upon a few days of shore bird shooting, he selected the extreme eastern coast of this great peninsula as his ground for operations, and began to make inquiry as to the best point at which to set out his decoys, and what accommodations he might expect to meet with. As a result, tickets were purchased for the time-honored town of Chatham, which is the last station reached by the southern extension of the Cape Cod division of the Old Colony road. The trip from New York may be an all rail one if desired, but by far the pleasantest route is via Fall River line steamer to Fall River, and thence by rail via Middleboro, to Chatham. Aside from the pleasant anticipations of good sport after reaching one's destination, it is a treat indeed to leave the overpowering heat of a great city, and upon the shady decks of the Puritan or Priscilla, steam around the Battery and up the East River, passing the big Bridge, Blackwell's Island, and Ward's Island, and the many other interesting and picturesque points along the shore, until one enters the broad waters of the Sound. The Fall River Line boats afford perhaps the greatest degree of comfort and luxury that one can find in sea travel anywhere in the world, and the experience of a journey up the Sound, during the hot months of the Summer, even without the luxurious accommodations to be enjoyed upon these boats, is in itself

well worth taking. Fall River is reached at six o'clock in the morning, and after breakfast aboard the boat, one takes the train at 7.20 A. M., immediately at the steamboat landing, and an hour later, is skirting the northern shore of Buzzard's Bay. Upon leaving Buzzard's Bay station, one can easily, from the car windows, see the Summer home of President Cleveland, and the beautiful shores that extend southward from Gray Gables to Woods Hull, and Martha's Vineyard Sound. The road from Buzzard's Bay runs along the shore of Cape Cod Bay, past Sagamore, Barnstable, Yarmouth, Harwich, and the many other popular Summer resorts of New England people. Three hours and fifteen minutes after leaving the steamer, the old town of Chatham is reached, and one is driven in a carry-all through its queer old streets to the sandy shore, and thence southward a distance of two miles, to the Chatham Beach Hotel.

Just off the main shore stretches a long sand bar which forms the breakwater of Chatham Harbor, and the carry-all takes the gunner across the ford and on to this sand bar. At a distance of two miles from the ford is the Government life-saving station at Chatham. This station was for some years in charge of Captain Nat. E. Gould, one of the hardiest, most experienced and bravest men in the service. Many years of arduous work and the hardships encountered in patrolling the ice-bound beach of Cape Cod, finally determined the Captain upon relinquishing the exacting conditions of life necessitated by his duties in the service, and, being an ardent sportsman, he con ceived the idea of building near the life-saving station, a comfortable hotel, capable of accommodating from thirty to forty guests, and of utilizing the great flats which extended southward therefrom, for the pleasure and accommodation of any and all sportsmen who might be attracted by the

sport which they offered. Consequently, the Captain built the Chatham Beach Hotel, wherein it has been the writer's pleasure to meet some of the most congenial spirits that he has encountered in a long career of many similar journeys. The view down the beach, as one approaches the hotel, while almost desolate in its long stretches of white sand, with here and there an old and weatherworn wreck, is at the same time a most impressive one. The surf here is one of the grandest on the New England coast, and the hotel, without any professions to architectural beauty, comfort and convenience for sportsmen being about the only objects aimed at, fronts the ocean not more than fifty yards from the long line of white-capped combers that break over a beach anywhere from one hundred to two hundred feet in width. No guest ever presented himself at the door of the Chatham Beach Hotel and failed to receive a cheery welcome from the Captain and his good wife, who makes the table at the hotel, and the good things served upon it, her individual and special charge.

The walls, floors and ceilings of the hotel are ceiled in white pine; the beds are scrupulously neat and clean, and while each guest is made his own bell boy, there is nothing in the house that he cannot have if he asks for it, a fact our little party soon discovered after reaching its portals.

We had arrived about noon, and the breeze from the ocean was not only cool, but it was chilly. The transition from the sun-baked granite blocked pavements of New York was so complete that one could scarcely realize it, the change from 96 in the shade to 70, being to all of us as unexpected as it was delightful. On arrival, we learned that it would be high tide about four o'clock, and so with plenty of time to unpack our trunks, get on our shooting togs, and enjoy one of Mrs. Gould's wholesome New England dinners, we made no haste