Cl)E 3.ut)Ubon ©octEties 



EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT 



Edited by WILLIAM DUTCHER 



Address all correspondence, and send all 



the National Association of Audubon Soc 



for dues and contributions, to 

 Broadway, New York City 



Notice oi Annual Meeting of the National 

 Association of Audubon Societies 



The annual meeting of the members of the 

 National Association of Audubon Societies 

 for the Protection of Wild Birds and Animals, 

 for the election of four directors to take the 

 places of the following directors, viz.: Frank 

 M. Chapman, Witmer Stone, Hermon Bum- 

 pus and William Brewster, class of 1907, 

 whose terms of office will then expire, and of 

 George Panitz and Alphonso Hodgman, 

 class of 1907, who have resigned, and for the 

 transaction of such other business as may 

 properly come before the meeting, will be 

 held at the American Museum of Natural 

 History, Columbus avenue and 77th street, 

 in the Borough of Manhattan and City of 

 New York, on the 29th day of October, 1907, 

 at 2 o.clock.— T. Gilbert Pearson, Sec'y. 



Wood Duck and Woodcock Summer 

 Shooting Condemned 



Wood Ducks bred here (Long Island, N. 

 Y.) this season and all summer long I have 

 seen scattered birds, and now small bunches 

 are beginning to appear in the ponds close by. 

 I saw one nice bunch of seven, a few morn- 

 ings ago, in a pond right close to several 

 houses. 



For the past two months — ever since I 

 first looked for them — I have been finding 

 Woodcock, and I believe I have pretty well 

 proven the theory that these birds can regu- 

 larly be found within a few feet of where you 

 first locate them, for I have found them every 

 time I cared to look for them. If summer 

 shooting is allowed to continue, you can 

 readily see how^ this local habit of the Wood- 

 cock will seal its doom. To this very habit I 

 attribute its present scarcity in sections where 

 it was formerly abundant, for gunners have 



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killed everv bird they could find, until none 

 was left to return another season. In Nassau 

 and Queens counties I know great stretches 

 of fine Woodcock grounds where today the 

 bird is rarely seen in the summer months, 

 while further east, in Suffolk county, where 

 the bird is not much disturbed, in the summer 

 months, it can still be found in goodly num- 

 bers. 



To illustrate how destructive summer shoot- 

 ing is, I have heard of one man who killed 

 nine birds on the Fourth of July, this year. 

 This man is not a good shot, but he takes 

 pride in the fact that not a bird escaped him. 

 These birds were killed along a small drain, 

 in one piece of woods, and he probably killed 

 the old and young of two entire broods. Next 

 season this party will probably wonder why 

 there are no birds in this particular patch of 

 woods. A few such men as the above will 

 destroy many birds in a season and in a short 

 while wdll leave the section of country they 

 hunt without a bird. 



If the open season did not begin until the 

 first of October, or even until the 15th of Sep- 

 tember, it would be impossible to kill off all 

 the birds found; for by that time they would 

 have obtained their full growth and would be 

 better able to take care of themselves. Every 

 gunner knows that after you put up a fall 

 Woodcock a couple of times without getting 

 it, it is a hard matter to again locate it. In 

 this connection, I might state that, on a trip 

 last fall, a friend found about thirty-five 

 Woodcock, only sixteen of which were killed. 

 He could, of course, have killed a few more 

 of these birds, but does not believe in 

 hunting too close. Many of these birds 

 would not lie for the dogs, and flushed with- 

 out giving a shot, showing that in the fall 

 they are well able to take care of themselves. 

 — John H. Hendrickson, Jamaica. L. I. 



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