(Two chapters in a row, one more chapter later)

The black-faced spoonbill is a very beautiful bird, especially during the summer breeding season, when they will grow a long hair-like orange crest on their back occipital, and an orange scarf with a palm-wide scarf under the front neck and upper chest, and the other parts of the body are still snow-white in winter, with slender black shins, black forehead, face, throat, eyes and eye area, and a black, up and down flattened pipa-shaped beak, which has both appearance and characteristics. It's no wonder that Da Nian wanted to make them into specimens.

However, unlike wild ducks and geese, the black-faced spoonbill is a wading bird in that its nest is built on a cliff near the water or a small island near the water, making it difficult to approach them from land. By water, their range of activity is limited to wetland environments such as reed swamps and coastal tidal flats with a water depth of only a dozen centimeters, and boats cannot sail in front of them at all. If you shoot them from a distance, even if you can shoot them, you can't get close to them beyond hundreds of meters of swamps and tidal flats, even for curly-haired hounds. These shallow swamps are too dangerous for both humans and dogs, and it's easy to get stuck in them and get out.

Therefore, if you want to hunt herons, you must have good terrain, shallow tidal flats or swamps must be narrow enough to be close to deep water, so that it can be easily approached by boats. At this time, there were quite a few such sandbars in Hangzhou Bay around Ningbo, and the route had long been clearly understood in the unremitting hunting activities of Western expatriates for decades.

Gao Yi and his hunting team consisted of six small boats, each carrying a sailor and one or two passengers.

The boat was rowed upstream of the sandbar by sailors, and then floated silently down the current, and the sailors sitting at the back of the dinghy only had to use the oars as rudders to grasp the direction of progress, without making a sound, and looked like a log floating downstream.

Gao Yi was half-lying on the bow of the boat, dressed in a dark green hunting suit, and behind him lay Madame de Gray, observing the approaching group of herons with a birding goggle.

Herons prefer to live in groups and often have a mix of species. The group of egrets in front of Gao Yi included huge herons and great egrets, with two narrow and soft spear-like feathers on the back of their necks, small egrets shaped like braids, and white ibises with a beak curved like a hook. On top of that, of course, there are five black-faced spoonbills. The orange crests on the top of their heads are so obvious that they can be distinguished from other herons from a distance, and there is no need to discern whether their long black beaks are lute or not—in fact, when viewed from the side, their beaks are straight and long, like those of other birds, and can only be seen to be lute when viewed from the front.

The herd of five black-faced spoonbills is not large, but it is up to them to make a harvest today. This is the last sandbar, and the previous ones didn't even see a black-faced spoonbill.

Gao Yi's small boat was the first to reach the heron flock, but he did not shoot, but looked at the fleet behind him, and only after the last boat came into range, he would be the first to shoot to give a signal, and then the rest of the ships fired two volleys.

The black-faced spoonbill is an elegant bird, they are just 30 meters away, but they do not feel the slightest danger has quietly descended, still leisurely wandering on the tidal flats, sometimes inserting their long beak into the water, half-open mouth, wading forward in the shallow water while shaking their heads left and right to sweep, through the sense of touch to catch the bottom of the water, shrimp, crabs, mollusks, aquatic insects and even aquatic plants, after catching the long beak to the outside of the water, to swallow the food.

Gao Yi looked at these unsuspecting and beautiful creatures, and he was rarely moved with pity, which he had not had when he killed the two black-winged stilts before. But no matter how he felt in his heart, what had to be done had to be done.

The fleet made an arc against the edge of the waterway and the sandbar shoals, just framing the heron flock in a fan-shaped area, and Gao Yi saw that the time was almost up, so he knelt up from the stern, raised the Beretta double-barreled shotgun in his hand and fired a shot, and suddenly the smoke of black powder filled his field of vision. When Gao Yi looked back when the boat sailed out of the smoke area, he saw the boat behind him spewing fire and smoke in turn, as if the battleships marching in a battle line were hitting the enemy with string side artillery fire.

With a "bang", Gao Yi raised his hand and grabbed it, and fired another shot in the general direction.

After two rounds of shooting, the water was filled with the terrified screams of birds and large clouds of smoke that seemed to freeze in the air. Gao Yi put down Beretta and picked up the rifle resting at his feet, then he changed to a more flexible squatting position, opened the safety and aimed the muzzle of the gun at the sky.

Gao Yi still used yesterday's M1896 Cragg Jorgensen cavalry rifle, although this gun was beaten by the Spaniard Mauser M1893 in the Spanish-American War, but that is because the Mauser gun uses a bridge clip, so it is faster to change the ammunition, and the M1896 also needs to be loaded into the fixed magazine one by one. In fact, in terms of shooting accuracy and the weight of the whole gun, the M1896 is better than the Mauser M1983.

A black-faced spoonbill flew over Gao Yi's head, and even in such an emergency, it flew gracefully and gently, with its neck and legs stretched out and its wings flapping slowly and rhythmically.

At the moment of shooting, Gao Yi suddenly thought, since he didn't need to shoot the giant fart anymore, then why did he shoot this beautiful animal against his will? So at the last moment, the muzzle of the gun was slightly off, and with a "bang", the bullet didn't know where it flew.

After the smoke on the water surface completely cleared, Gao Yi and the others saw a completely post-slaughter scene, blood and white feathers everywhere, and several white bodies that had not yet died were fluttering and rolling in the shallow water, and each roll of the body was dyed with a darker layer of red.

On several dinghys loaded with dogs, the curly-haired hounds happily threw themselves into the water and swam towards their prey. It didn't take long for the results to be counted, and there were several herons, great egrets, little egrets, and white ibises, but not a single black-faced spoonbill.

Looking at Ju Laida's disappointed expression, Gao Yi felt sincerely happy.

"It's a pity that the black-faced spoonbill that flew overhead just now didn't hit it. Yesterday I heard Amy say that your marksmanship is very good. Madame de Grey lamented.

"We're on a boat, we're unsteady on our feet, and it's easy to deviate." Gao Yi shrugged his shoulders and replied.

******

The "Patterson" and the "Betterson" parted before lunch, the "Patterson" will return to Shanghai, and the "Betterson" will sail in the direction of the Shengsi Islands off the coast. Madame de Grey did not go back with the Patterson, but boarded the Betsy, ready to spend the next two days with Gao Yi and the others.

Gao Yi also wanted to go back, but it was not his wish to be in the same boat as Ju Laida. Since talking to Ju Laida this morning, the other party seems to have suddenly changed his painting style, and he is extremely enthusiastic about Gao Yi, and sometimes he is even more clingy than Mrs. Grisen. If he stayed in the same boat with this guy for another ten hours, Gao Yi couldn't even guarantee whether he would throw him into the sea with his neck crossed.

The destination of Gao Yi's trip was one of the easternmost islands of the Shengsi Islands, and the map showed a sea turtle, which should be a place where turtles could be caught.

The distance they reached from this small island was about the same as that of Chongming, and it was about a hundred nautical miles, and it took eight hours to reach the island. Since the landing site was a sandy beach rather than a silt flat, they did not build a trestle this time, but jumped directly from the dinghy into the sea and walked ashore. The ladies were not pretentious, they did not let people carry or hug them, and they also waded on the shore of the water on their own.

Their anchorage was an open bay with a rocky cliff on the right and a rocky headland plunging into the sea on the left; Beyond the headland is another bay, but smaller, with a pile of reefs on the left side that stretches from the sea to the shore. Rarely, there was a stream that rushed down from the rocky cliff on the back of the cove and into the sea on the reef beach.

The bonfire was soon lit, and the pre-prepared food of the ship was brought ashore, and at about half past seven, when everyone was so hungry that they no longer distinguished between hosts, guests, sailors, and sailors, and everyone ate and drank together.

When they were seven or eight minutes full, some people began to dislike the food on the boat, so they jumped into the sea and touched the fish and shrimp, so it was not long before all kinds of shellfish, crabs, prawns, and even a few fish that were caught with their bare hands were grilled on the campfire.

More and more people are going down to the sea, including the guests on the ship, who are no longer satisfied with eating the food prepared by others, but want to catch it with their own hands.

Suddenly, there was a cheer from the sea, and in Gao Yi's stunned eyes, a sea turtle was caught directly from the reef near the shore, then the second, then the third.

The three turtles were quickly decapitated, their bellies cut open, their entrails removed, and then their limbs cut off and thrown into their open bellies, where they roasted directly over the campfire, as if they had brought three cauldrons.

In addition to food, countless bottles of wine were uncorked and poured down people's throats like water. In less than two hours, there were already a few people lying on the beach, and the rest were also hobbling around aimlessly in the darkness like ghosts. The only people who still kept their heads clear were probably the sailors, captains and first mates on duty on the ship.

Of course, these people should also include Gao Yi, who is also awake, or more precisely, he is asleep in a waking state.