having merely wandered that far to look at my eel-lines, yet I felt
as guilty as though my hand had pulled the trigger. Just as the
noble bird drifted to our feet,--for I could not help going down to
the river's edge, where Pepper (our head shepherd) stood, looking
very contrite,--it reared itself half out of the water, with a
hissing noise and threatening bill, resolved to sell its liberty as
dearly as it could; but the effort only spread a brighter shade of
crimson on the waters surface for a brief moment, and then, with
glazing eye and drooping crest, the dying creature turned over on
its side and was borne helpless to our feet. By the time Pepper
extended his arm and drew it in, with the quaint apology, "I'm sorry
I shot yer, old feller! I, am, indeed," the heron was dead; and that
happened to be the only one I ever came across during my mountain
life. Once I saw some beautiful red-shanks flying down the gorge of
the Selwyn, and F--- nearly broke his neck in climbing the crag from
whence one of them rose in alarm at the noise of our horses' feet on
the shingle. There were three eggs in the inaccessible cliff-nest,
and he brought me one, which I tried in vain to hatch under a
sitting duck. Betty would not admit the intruder among her own
eggs, but resolutely pushed it out of her nest twenty times a day,
until at last I was obliged to blow it and send it home to figure in
a little boy's collection far away in Kent.

I have seen very good blue duck shooting on the Waimakiriri river,
but 50 per cent. of the birds were lost for want of a retriever bold
enough to face that formidable river. Wide as was the beautiful
reach, on whose shore the sportsmen stood, and calmly as the deep
stream seemed to glide beneath its high banks, the wounded birds,
flying low on the water, had hardly dropped when they disappeared,
sucked beneath by the strong current, and whirled past us in less