And so they had for a good many evenings, the two winged geese being used as decoys, and Snap and Wharton (the latter now armed with a gun) being hidden carefully in reedy ambushes hard by. It was intensely exciting work, sitting there waiting until one of the many legions of birds which passed incessantly overhead lowered to the water on which the decoy sat. At first Snap could make nothing of the shooting, and, to tell the truth, Wharton was not a bit better. He wasn't used, he said, 'to these blessed scatter-guns,' which 'weren't of no account alongside of a rifle.' If a single duck came along, Snap never hit it. If a long string passed over him, and he fired at the leading bird, sometimes nothing happened, but oftener the fourth or fifth bird, at an interval of several yards, came down with a thump, gratifying to the pot-hunter, but not complimentary to the young gunner, who felt that he had missed his mark by as many yards as there were birds in front of the one which he bagged. After a good deal of practice he began to learn not only how far to shoot in front of the swift-flying birds, but how to swing with them, i.e. to keep his gun moving as he fired. Being younger than Wharton, and having shot a little at home, he soon learnt to beat the old man, who, if he could possibly help it, would not waste powder on a flying shot at all.
What most astonished Snap in this wonderful migration was that all the birds killed in the first day or two were young birds. Later on, flocks of old ones began to arrive, but all the advance guard, as it were, of the bird army, whether wavies or brent, swans or duck, were birds of that season only; birds who had never, could never, have travelled that road before. 'It is wonderful enough,' thought Snap, 'to see the cattle all come wandering in with no one to drive them from the pastures, which will soon be all snow and ice; it is wonderful that the birds should know that winter is coming, and be able to find their way from the bleak, frost-bound north to the more genial climates in which they winter; but that the bird-babies, born this summer only, should lead the way, is most wonderful of all. They can't remember! Who is it who leads them?' And, so thinking, the boy lay down to rest, and the loud clanging of the swans, and the call of the geese, and sharp whistling of the ducks' wings all told the same story, and if even a sparrow can't fall to the ground without His knowing, Snap thought he didn't fear the future so long as the One who guided the swans through the night and the darkness would guide him too.
This migration, which took place in November, lasted only a week or ten days, though a few late detachments kept passing perhaps for a week after the main body had gone over.
There were ten 'wavies,' or snow-geese, for every other bird which passed, and next to them in number were the Canadian geese and brent. The brent we know at home, or at least all dwellers by the shore know him, for he is the chief object of the punt-gunner's pursuit, and was at one time so common in England that up in Lancashire, where they thought he grew from the barnacles which cover ships' bottoms and breakwaters, a brace of brent were sold for three-pence. If he was as good then as a corn-fed Canada goose is now, I should like to have lived in those days, but I fancy he never was so dainty a bird as his Canadian cousin. The wavy, or snow-goose, is so numerous that the Canadian Acts of Parliament, which protect all other ducks and geese, leave this poor fellow unprotected; but then the snow-goose is like the sands on the sea-shore for number, and most of the year he dwells either in the frozen North or on Siberian tundras where gunners can't get at him.
He is a handsome bird, the snow-goose, and the older he gets the handsomer he is. As a youngster he is white all over, except his head and the tips of his wings, his head being yellowish-red and his wing-tips black. As he grows older his head grows whiter, until at last there is nothing to mark him out from the icebergs and snow amongst which his life is passed, except those two or three black feathers in his wing.
The Canada goose is almost as black as his fellow-traveller is white; a dark, smart-looking, and jauntily moving bird, not much unlike a brent, with a neat white collar round his neck.
These two species, together with swans of two sorts, 'trumpeters' and 'whistlers,' and half a dozen kinds of duck—widgeon and shoveller, pochard, pintail, and wood-duck—kept Snap, gun and mind, busy for a fortnight, and if the bag was not always heavy the pleasure was great, for Snap was what every really good sportsman is, more a naturalist than a mere shooter, and loved to watch the birds, even though they never came within range.
One evening the darkness came on without even a single wing to break the stillness. As he came down to the 'hide,' as his ambuscade was called, he put up one of those quaintly-named little ducks, a 'buffle-headed butter-ball,' but, disdaining to fire at this, he never fired a shot all night.
It was the final warning that winter was coming at last. Next day the clouds were low and yellow. Towards evening the big flakes came floating down. Next morning the world was white from river to mountain-top. The pines were snow-plumed, the rivers frost-bound; a bitter cold seemed to sting you as you put your face out of doors; the whole five blankets and the rug were wanted above you at night. Winter had come!