192 WADING BIRDS. 



above water. They even cling with their feet to the reeds be- 

 neath that element, where they would sooner endure suffoca- 

 tion than expose themselves with any chance of being seen ; 

 they often also skulk on ordinary occasions under the floating 

 reeds, with nothing more than the bill above water. At other 

 times when wounded they will dive, and rise under the gun- 

 wale of the sportsman's boat, and secreting themselves there, 

 have the cunning to go round as the vessel moves until, given 

 up as lost, they find an opportunity of completing their escape. 



According to the observations of Mr. Ord, the females 

 more particularly are sometimes so affected by fear or some 

 other passion as to fall into sudden fits and appear stretched 

 out as lifeless, recovering after a while the use of their faculties, 

 and falling again into syncope on merely presenting the finger 

 in a threatening attitude. At such times and during their ob- 

 stinate divings they often fall victims, no doubt, to their enemies 

 in the watery element, as they are sometimes seized by eels 

 and other voracious fish, who lie in wait for them ; so that the 

 very excess of their fear and caution hurries them into addi- 

 tional dangers, and frustrates the intention of this instinct for 

 preser\^ation. The swooning to which they appear subject is 

 not uncommon with some small and delicate irritable birds, 

 and Canaries are often liable to these death-like spasms, into 

 which they also fall at the instigation of some immaterial or 

 trifling excitement of a particular kind. 



During the greater part of the months of September and 

 October, the market of Philadelphia is abundantly supplied with 

 this highly esteemed game, and they are usually sold at from fifty 

 cents to a dollar the dozen. But soon after the first frosts of 

 October or towards the close of that month, they all move off 

 to the South. In Virginia they usually remain until the first 

 week in November. In the vicinity of Cambridge (Mass.), a 

 few, as a rarity, only are now and then seen in the course of 

 the autumn in the Zizania patches which border the outlet of 

 Fresh Pond ; but none are either known or suspected to breed 

 in any part of this State, where they are, as far as I can learn, 

 everywhere uncommon. 



