The tall yellowshank or stone-snipe, with his slim gilded stilts and snow-white breast, familiar to the gunner as a migrant and a frequent companion of the upland-plover, would be esteemed by the sportsman-epicure if only for the recollection of his splendid spread of wing, his graceful circlings, his loud whistling notes, and his lovely silvery plumage.
Although considered less desirable than the snipe and woodcock, the upland-or grass-plover—in reality a sandpiper—should by no means be overlooked. One intuitively thanks him for the scenes he graciously leads to—the placid September day steeped in sunshine, the tender green of sprouting wheat-fields, the pageant of asters, and the billowy roll of mushroom-studded pastures. One hears anew his weird, plaintive cry in the arc overhead—like the bleat of distant folds—audible long ere the grey forms are discernible, as the sportsman imitates their notes, and the wavering flock, with a flutter of white wings, drops down to the sward below. Besides the salad which should accompany all species of game, the upland-plover, therefore, should be garnished with his accessory, the field-mushroom, whose snowy pileus and pink gills his dainty tread is constantly brushing, but never ruffling, amid the old pastures, stump-lots, and sheep-walks he frequents.
But the graceful Bartramian sandpiper has other aliases than those of upland-, field-, and grass-plover. Besides his common appellation of "tattler," he is known in Louisiana as the "pepperpot," and more generally as the "papabotte"—a local name, from the Creole French, significant of all that is most prized in edible game. "Arriving from the vast prairies of Mexico and Texas, where they spend the winter," says Audubon, "the dry upland plains of Louisiana called Opellousas and Attacapas are amply peopled with this species in early spring as well as in autumn. About New Orleans they appear in great bands in spring, and are met with on the open plains and large grassy savannahs."
Upon the restaurant cards of New Orleans and other Southern cities he figures much as the truffle does in France—his particular food imparting to his flesh a peculiar flavour and certain peculiar virtues. The favourite mode of preparing him by the New Orleans clubs is to roast him and serve him slightly underdone with the trail finely minced on toast. His appearance is nearly simultaneous with that of a blister-beetle known as the "Spanish fly"—one of the extremely numerous members of the genus Coleoptera and family Cantharididæ, of which a large portion are common to the haunts of the bird. This destructive insect comes in myriads to prey upon growing vegetation, but the papabotte consumes vast numbers until his disappearance during latter September, as the upland-plover does of grasshoppers and crickets in the North—waxing so fat upon his favourite diet that when he falls before the gunner he often bursts open like an overripe fruit. He is known chiefly as the plover in Texas, where, in addition to a diet of grasshoppers, etc., he subsists largely on the striped blister-beetle (Lytta vitatta), and doubtless also on the black blister-beetle (Lytta atrata), which is likewise quite common to Texas during certain years. It is probable that both these species of cantharides form a large portion of his diet in Louisiana as well. A wary bird when approached on foot, and not lying to the dog, he is frequently hunted on horseback, or by employing a horse and wagon, when he is easily brought to bag. The flesh of the cantharide-fed bird is always extremely heating in its effects; and, indeed, owing to the absorption of cantharidin, the active principle of the insect, it not unfrequently acts as a violent irritant and poison. Yet the papabotte is eagerly sought for, and by the epicure his flesh is more highly esteemed than that of the woodcock, snipe, or sora.[50]
Notable among indigenous game-birds are the ruffed grouse, the quail, the pinnated grouse, and the woodcock, together with numerous other varieties of the family Tetraonidæ, variously classed by the ornithologists, that are less familiar or less widely distributed, and are locally known under various names. With these may be included not a few species that do not figure properly as game, such as the wild turkey, canvasback duck, etc.
All things considered, the ruffed grouse—the "partridge" of the North and "pheasant" of the South—is entitled to rank first among feathered game. Nothing swifter or more valiant in plumage tests the sportsman's nerve and skill. So far as sport is concerned, he may be placed, from his alertness, swiftness, and the trying nature of his usual habitat, on a par with the trout of the clear Hampshire chalk-streams, whose fastidiousness in rising to the artificial fly so taxes the angler's resources on the placid reaches of the Itchen, the Anton, and the Test. He is preëminently the bird of the woodlands, supreme in his sturdiness and his strength. His roll-call awakens the wind-flower, and his thunderous whir! fans the September air into freshness. He blends with the buffs of the beech and russets of the oak, and is eloquent with the lustihood of the ripened year. And how artfully he assimilates with the shadows and thrusts a tree-trunk between himself and the gunner!
See him as he springs from the tangle of the saplings, a shaft of mottled splendour where the sunlight strikes his sides; and the hoarse boom of the double-barrel fails to check his tumultuous flight. Behold him in the spring while he struts upon his chosen log with extended tufts and expanded feathers, beating the air with his wings, and sounding his reverberating peal of defiance and of love. Consider him amid the rigours of the frost, loyal to his native haunts, true to the instincts of his race, when most of his companions have deserted him for more congenial climes. Observe him once more when the deadly volley has stopped his career, and he falls upon the russet carpet, in glossy black ruff, and plumage in blended hues of olive, brown, black, and grey—the noblest game-bird that treads the forest aisles!
PARTRIDGE SHOOTING, I. LA CHASSE AUX PERDRIX
From the coloured print after Howitt, 1807