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"Our shooting-party has returned," she said. They crossed the drive through the white glare of the motor lamps; people were passing, grooms with dogs and guns and fluffy bunches of game-birds, several women in motor costumes, veils afloat, a man or two in shooting-tweeds or khaki.
Just now the training of young falcons was absorbing all of his leisure time. The falconer, Marcel, had showed him how to make the lure, which was shaped something like a pair of wings made of quilted leather and thickly fledged with the wing-feathers of game-birds.
After that the two used often to follow the edges of the hardwood swamps, the creek bottoms, the hillsides of popples, and later in the season the sumac and berry-vine tangles of the old burnings, looking for that king of game-birds, the ruffed grouse.
The wolves are at all seasons more or less destructive to small domestic stock, and sometimes in the severity of a hard winter they will gather in large numbers and attack human beings, though as a rule they are timid and keep out of the way of men. There are also some desirable game-birds in these forests.
The game-birds are the bustard, florikan, guinea-fowl, partridge, quail, snipe, various geese and ducks, and a very dark-coloured rock-pigeon or sand-grouse. The birds in general have very tame plumage, and are much more scarce, generally speaking, than one finds in most other countries.
The hawk looks awkward and out of place on the ground; the game-birds hurry and skulk; but the crow is at home, and treads the earth as if there were none to molest or make him afraid. The crows we have always with us, but it is not every day or every season that one sees an eagle. Hence I must preserve the memory of one I saw the last day I went bee-hunting.
Their spiritless contests differ as much from those of the game-birds as do the fist fights of untrained men from the contests of skilled pugilists. Although to persons unaccustomed to the spectacle the combats between game-birds may seem disgusting, almost every one must admire the valor, grace, and address which such scenes exhibit.
Game-birds are not abundant, but four species of pheasant are found, of which the largest and handsomest is the moonal, bronze-green glossed with gold and with a tail of cinnamon red. Sportsmen in the Himalaya are familiar with the sight of this radiantly-coloured bird swishing down the mountain-side with apparently the speed and almost the brilliancy of a flash of lightning.
The game-birds mocked me from the thicket; a brace of white berghaan circled far up in the blue; and I had for pleasant comrade the brawling river. I dismounted once to drink, and in that green haven of flowers and ferns I was struck sharply with a sense of folly.
At this rate it took them a week to shoot a breakfast; but to see them sally forth, splendid in velveteen and corduroy, with top-boots and a complete harness of green cord and patent-leather straps, you would have imagined that all game-birds were about to become extinct in that region.
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