The Shoveller 



59 



to their small size, they do not command so much as the Canvasback, Redhead, 

 or Mallard. In the winter of 1915, a gunner offered to sell me a pair on the 

 streets of New Orleans for sixty-five cents. It was against the law in Louisiana 

 to seU or offer for sale these birds, and I am not certain that this man was 

 able to dispose of his Ducks before being taken in charge by a game- warden. 

 On the whole the Shoveller is not only one of our handsomest species of 

 wildfowl, but is a very valuable game-bird. The numbers annually killed are 

 prodigious, and it is the eighth wonder of the world that it has been able to 

 withstand the continuous persecution of gunners to which it has been so long 

 subjected. Laws prohibiting the sale of wildfowl have been enacted in a few 

 states within recent years, and bird-reservations have been estabUshed in 

 regions inhabited by the Shoveller. Where sale is prohibited, the chief incentive 

 for kilUng by the market-hunter is taken away and thus one big destructive 

 agency is removed. The progress made in both of these directions is too slight 

 to insure the perpetuation of the species on our continent; but, as Shovellers 

 are still to be found in goodly numbers, and as the sentiment for bird-conserva- 

 tion is rapidly growing, it would appear that this Duck has a fair chance of 

 persisting among us for a long time to come. 



