Birds in Relation to Agriculture in New York State 1795 



should not be made to yield an ever-increasing supply of wild ducks, 

 and wide areas that are at present valueless, to give some return to the 

 people of the State. Some effort will have to be made at first in order to 

 establish the breeding birds; for, even though conditions be made very 

 favorable, it will take many years for the birds to become established, 

 because all birds tend to return to the place of their birth and most of 

 the ducks have been hatched farther north. If, however, a breeding race 

 should become established in New York State, the same homing instinct 

 would tend to insure their returning to the people of the State rather than 

 going elsewhere. 



Few persons watching the flocks 

 of wild ducks as they wing their 

 way southward, or drift about the 

 middle of our lakes out of reach 

 of the hundreds of gunners who 

 pursue them, realize that they are 

 wild and wary only because they 

 have been shot at until they look 

 on man only as their enemy. Few 

 persons know that when the hunt- 

 ing season closes and the birds find 

 it safe to venture near the shores 

 and the abodes of man, they be- 

 come nearly as tame and unsus- 

 picious as domestic fowls. The 

 accompanying photograph shows a 

 flock of wild ducks (bluebills) in a 

 creek within the city of Ithaca, 



which swam toward people approaching, rather than away from them, 

 because they had been kindly treated and fed when their natural food 

 supply was scarce. If these ducks could be encouraged to nest in New 

 York State, how much they would add to our lakes and streams, as well 

 as to the table and the enjoyment of the sportsman ! 



The probers 



In this group are found the snipe, the woodcock, the sandpipers, and the 

 plovers — birds with long, slender bills, with which they probe in the soft 

 mud or between the stones of the beach for insects, mollusks, and crusta- 

 ceans. The snipe and the woodcock have the longest bills, the plovers 

 have the shortest; the last named not probing for their food so much as 

 do the others. 



These birds are found along shores, wet meadows, or, in the case of the 

 woodcock, moist woods. Few species .nest in New York State, but on 



Fig. 25. — The yellowlegs, a prober 



