The birds that are shot along our shores upon the sand-bars or broad salt meadows, or even upon the adjoining fields of upland, are among sportsmen termed bay-birds or bay-snipe; and although including several distinct varieties, present a general similarity in manners and habits. They are ordinarily killed by stratagem over decoys, and not by open pursuit; different varieties frequent the same locality, so that many species will be collected in the same bag; they are for the most part, except the upland birds, tough and sedgy, and at times hardly fit for the table; and they arrive and may be killed at certain periods in vast numbers. Although despised by the upland sportsman, who regards the use of the dog as essential to the pure exercise of his art; and by the pot-hunter, because they do not generally bring high prices in market;--to the genuine lover of nature and the gun they furnish splendid sport, requiring, if not as high a degree of skill as may be needed to cut down a quail in the dense coverts, at least as many fine qualities in the sportsman, and as thorough a knowledge of their habits as any other bird. In upland shooting the dog does the largest part of the work, and invariably deserves the credit for a super-excellent bag; and truly glorious is it to follow the dog that can make that bag, and wonderful to watch his powers;--but in bay-snipe shooting there is no trusty dog to look to, who can retrieve by his superiority his master’s blunderings. The man relies upon himself, and himself alone; he it is that must, with quick observant eye, catch the faint outline of the distant flock, and with sharp ear distinguish the first audible call; his experience must determine the nature of the birds, his powers of imitation bring them within gunshot, and his skill drop them advantageously from the crowded flock. To excel in all this requires long patience, much experience, and great qualities of mind and body; and few are the sportsmen who ever deserve the compliment paid by old Paulus Enos of Quogue, when he remarked, “Colonel P. is a werry destructive man--a werry destructive man in a flock of birds.” It is true that quail-shooting is almost a certainty; and day after day of fair weather, with well-trained animals and good marksmen, will produce nearly the same average, so that an entire failure will be almost impossible; whereas, with bay-snipe everything, in the first instance, depends upon the flight; and if there are no birds, the result must be a total blank; but when the season is propitious--and this can be determined by the experienced sportsman with tolerable accuracy--the sport is prodigious, and the number of shots enormous.