THE UNCHARTED SKY 117 



*'You-all said, last night," he remarked, ''that 

 the Wild Pigeon an' a lot of sea-fowl whose names 

 I don't rightly remember, w^ere killed off by pot- 

 huntin' durin' the nestin' season." 



''Yes, that's right," the official answered. 



"Where do the Wild Duck nest, these here 

 duck that come down to Currituck an' Pamlico 

 marshes?" 



"North," was the answer, "far, far north. Of 

 the forty species of wild ducks which visit the 

 United States, only half have their main breeding 

 range under the Stars and Stripes. The Wild 

 Duck nest in Greenland, in Labrador, on the shores 

 of Hudson Bay, in the Mackenzie River country, 

 the islands of Behring Sea or Southern Canada. 

 Some, like the Brant, go as far as Ellesmere Land 

 and the borders of the North Polar sea. 



"Ornithologists on the Polar expeditions, which, 

 with untold suffering and at tremendous ex- 

 pense, have forced their way to those frozen 

 wastes, find that, with the first burst of spring 

 sunshine, the birds are there beyond them. Where 

 the almost perpetual sun of the Arctic day frees 

 the ponds and marshes from ice, where the frozen 

 tundra thaws down for a couple of feet, there you 

 will find the flocks of ducks which have been win- 



