ANIMAL HABITATS 17 



The distinction between swampy life and the 

 more general life of the region is particularly 

 marked in arid regions. Thus on the Bear River 

 flats near Great Salt Lake in Utah, the surround- 

 ing sage-brush country shelters a sparse popula- 

 tion of desert lizards, snakes, insects and birds, 

 with a few mammals including the coyote. Nearby 

 in the swampy lands eleven species of ducks 

 nest and some fifteen thousand ducklings come 

 to maturity each year. Bitterns, great blue 

 herons, egrets, snowy herons, and other similar 

 marsh birds, yellow-headed and red-winged black- 

 birds and marsh wrens make their nests here in 

 abundance. Finding nests during the breeding 

 season is not arduous; the greater difficulty is to 

 avoid stepping on the eggs or the nestlings while 

 tramping through the short marsh grass or break- 

 ing through the canes. 



Later, water birds gather in great flocks for the 

 mid-summer moult and the autumn feeding. I 

 have seen a flock of male pin-tail ducks there in 

 June that literally darkened the sky when flushed, 

 as my father says wild pigeons in Indiana once 

 did. Later in the season shoveller ducks have 

 been seen on the lake in a bank two miles long 

 and a quarter of a mile wide, busily feeding on the 

 brine shrimps and the salt marsh maggots that 

 thrive in the briny waters of Great Salt Lake. 



One cannot tramp these marshes near the close 



