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 time than it takes one to write a line.