LIFE HISTORIES OF XORTH AMERICAN WILD FOWL 247 



are located and where the wild birds may alight. Live decoys are 

 preferable, but brant will come to good wooden decoys if properly 

 placed ; a supply of both is desirable. The brant feed at low tide 

 away off on the eelgrass beds ; but as the rising tide covers the gras,s 

 too deeply, they are driven to seek other feeding grounds or sanding 

 places, and in flying about will often come to the decoys. The best 

 shooting then is for a short time only at about half-flood tide and 

 again at about half ebb, while the birds are moving. The morning 

 tides are considered the best, so it is often quite dark when we tramp 

 down through the marsh to our box, heavily laden with decoys, guns, 

 and ammunition and encumbered with rubber boots and oilskins, for 

 it is cold and wet work. We set out the decoys, bale out the box, and 

 sit low on a wet seat, our eyes just above the rim of the box, and scan 

 the flats for distant flocks of brant. Occasional shots at passing 

 birds or small bunches on their way seem like fair sport. But when 

 a large flock swims up to the decoj^s on the rising tide or flies up and 

 settles on the bar among them, it is exciting enough, but it seems like 

 wanton slaughter to fire a battery of guns at a given signal into a 

 dense mass of birds. Perhaps a dozen or a score of birds are killed 

 or wounded and we jump out of the box and go splashing oft' through 

 the mud and water to retrieve the cripples. "When the rising tide 

 finally drives us out of our box, we may have a large bunch of birds 

 to lug back to the club house, but have we given them a fair show for 

 their lives? 



Brant shooting in Great South Bay, Long Island, and in southern 

 waters is usually done from batteries, such as are used for canvas- 

 back-duck shooting. As this means wing shooting most of the time, 

 it seems more sportsmanlike. The battery may be anchored near their 

 feeding ground or near a floating mass of eelgrass, known as a " sea- 

 weed bank," to which the brant resort to feed. 



Winter. — The winter home of the brant is along the Atlantic coast 

 from New Jersey southward. Probably most of the birds spend the 

 winter on the coast of Virginia and North Carolina. T. Gilbert 

 Pearson (1919) writes: 



In Pamlico Sound the long extended lines of submerged sandbars and mud- 

 flats, with their abundant supplies of eelgrass, make an ideal winter resort for 

 the brant. They arrive from the north usually early in November, but the 

 exact date depends much upon weather conditions. In flight they usually go 

 in compact flocks without any apparent leader. They move slowly and often 

 appear loath to leave a favorite feeding ground, even returning to it many 

 times after being disturbed. 



On clear winter days, as one sails along the reefs in the region about Ocra- 



coke or Hatteras, flocks of brant, disturbed from their feeding areas, arise 



in almost constant succession for miles, their numbers running far into the 



tens of thousands. When heavy winds arise these large rafts are broken up. 



100449—25 17 



