5. Wild duck, or mallard (Anas boschas).
6. Gray, or Gadwall duck (Anas strepera).
7. The common teal (Anas crecca), the flesh of which was so much prized by the Roman epicures, and is still in request for the table.
8. Widgeon (Anas Penelope).
9. Gray and ring plover (Charadrius minor, and hiaticula).
If we are out shooting in Canada we may easily add to our mess the ruffled grouse (Tetrao umbellus), although these, like many other birds, are partridges with the settlers—this variety being termed the birch partridge. Another species, the spruce partridge of the colonists (T. Canadensis), is less palatable, for, unfortunately, it has a habit of feeding upon laurel leaves. But here is something to make amends—a fine Esquimaux curlew, as large as an English partridge, and a mud-sucker, id est snipe.
Let me note a Canadian receipt for cooking a partridge, which may be useful to sportsmen and travellers:—
‘Expedition is the maxim of all sylvan cookery, and as plucking the feathers of a partridge would be too great a tax on the time and patience of the voyageur, the method most in vogue is to run your hunting knife round his throat and ancles and down his breast, when, taking a leg in each hand, and pressing your thumb into his back, you pop him out of his skin, as you would a pea from its pod. Then make a spread-eagle of him on a forked twig, the other extremity of which is thrust into the ground, and after wrapping a rasher of bacon around his neck and under his wings, as ladies wear a scarf, you incline him to the fire, turning the spit in the ground, and you will have a result such as Soyer might be proud of. When your other avocations will not afford time even for the skinning process, an alternative mode is to make a paste of ashes and water, and roll up your bird therein, with the feathers, and all the appurtenances thereof, and thrust the performance in the fire. In due time, on breaking the cemented shell (which is like a sugared almond), the feathers, skin, &c., adhere to it, and then you have the pure kernel of poultry within.’
The red-legged partridge is common in the Greek islands, on the continent of Asia, and in the southern countries of Europe. In some of the Cyclades, where the inhabitants are too poor to expend money on powder, they chase the birds on foot, till they are so wearied, as to be easily taken with the hand.
Of all the European birds, the quail (Coturnix vulgaris) is the most remarkable, on account of the vast numbers which congregate on the shores of the Mediterranean in the spring, coming from Asia Minor and Northern Africa, to avoid the excessive heat. For a few weeks in the month of April, when they first begin to arrive in Sicily, everybody is a sportsman. Arriving always in the night, although not a quail could be seen the evening before, the report of guns the next morning, in all directions, attests their number and the havoc that has begun upon them. Such prodigious numbers have appeared on the western coasts of the kingdom of Naples, that a hundred thousand have been taken in a day, within the space of four or five miles.