Alexander Dyce, A General Glossary to Shakespeare's Works

bat-fowling THE TEMPEST, ii. 1. 176. Is described as follows in Markham's Hunger's Preuention: or, The whole Arte of Fowling by Water and Land, etc.: “Next to the Tramell, I thinke meete to proceed to Batte-fowling, which is likewise a nighty [sic] taking of all sorts of great and small Birdes which rest not on the earth, but on Shrubbes, tal Bushes, Hathorne trees, and other trees, and may fitly and most conueniently be vsed in all woody, rough, and bushy countries, but not in the champaine. For the manner of bat-fowling, it may be vsed either with nettes or without nettes. If you vse it without nettes (which indeede is the most common of the two), you shall then proceede in this manner. First, there shall be one to carry the cresset of fire (as was shewed for the Lowbell), then a certaine number, as two, three, or foure (according to the greatnesse of your company); and these shall haue poales bound with dry round wispes of hay, straw, or such like stuffe, or else bound with pieces of linkes or hurdes dipt in pitch, rosen, grease, or any such like matter that will blaze. Then another company shal be armed with long poales, very rough and bushy at the vpper endes, of which the willow, byrche, or long hazell are best; but indeed according as the country will afford, so you must be content to take. Thus being prepared, and comming into the bushy or rough ground where the haunts of birds are, you shall then first kindle some of your fiers, as halfe or a third part, according as your prouision is, and then with your other bushy and rough poales you shall beat the bushes, trees, and haunts of the birds, to enforce them to rise; which done, you shall see the birds, which are raysed, to flye and play about the lights and flames of the fier; for it is their nature, through their amazednesse and affright at the strangenes of the lightt and the extreame darknesse round about it, not to depart from it, but, as it were, almost to scorch their wings in the same; so that those which haue the rough bushye poales may (at their pleasures) beat them down with the same, and so take them. Thus you may spend as much of the night as is darke, for longer is not conuenient; and doubtlesse you shall finde much pastime and take great store of birds; and in this you shall obserue all the obseruations formerly treated of in the Lowbell; especially that of silence, vntill your lights be kindled, but then you may vse your pleasure, for the noyse and the light when they are heard and seene afarre of, they make the birds sit the faster and surer. The byrdes which are commonly taken by this labour or exercise are, for the most part, the rookes, ringdoues, blackebirdes, throstles, feldyfares, linnets, bulfinches, and all other byrdes whatsoeuer that pearch or sit vpon small boughes or bushes. This exercise, as it may be vsed in these rough, woody, and bushie places, so it may also be vsed alongst quickset hedges or any other hedges or places where there is any shelter for byrdes to pearch in.” P. 98, ed. 1621 . (A simpler mode of bat-fowling, by means of a large clap-net and a lantern, and called bird-batting, is noticed in Fielding's Joseph Andrews, B. ii. ch. 10.)