I06 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



migration differ from those of riibripcs we are not at present definitely informed, 

 but it certainly moves southward earlier in autumn and probably returns some- 

 what later in spring. 



In the days when the Cabots were at Harvard College, Alewife Brook and 

 Little River abounded in secluded, grassy pools and reaches which attracted 

 great numbers of Black as well as Wood Ducks, but the former species had 

 nearly deserted these particular haunts before 1865. At that time and for some 

 five years later, however, a great many Black Ducks were killed in Smith's Pond 

 by a market gunner named Frost who shot from a brush stand over live decoys. 

 Large flocks also occasionally alighted in Hardy's Pond, as did small ones or 

 single birds in the Mystic Ponds, Pout Pond, the Glacialis, Bird's Pond, and 

 Charles River. 



In spring the Black Duck arrives long before our ponds are free from ice, 

 but it finds an abundance of food and a reasonable degree of safety in flooded 

 brook meadows or in pools of water formed by the melting snow in pastures or 

 even among dense woods. To several places of this character, in the less settled 

 parts of Belmont, Arlington and Waltham, it still resorts during the latter half 

 of March and the greater part of April, usually in pairs or singly but not infre- 

 quently in flocks containing from ten or fifteen to thirty or forty birds each. 



I am very positive that the Black Duck did not occur in summer near 

 Cambridge between the years 1865 and 1880. Had it done so, its presence 

 would almost certainly have been discovered, for during this period, and especi- 

 ally between 1868 and 1875, the whole Cambridge region was very frequently 

 and thoroughly ransacked by good field observers. Nor did the Cabots find the 

 bird breeding between 1832 and 1840, although Dr. Samuel Cabot, on one occa- 

 sion in spring, shot a female whose oviduct contained an egg nearly ready to be 

 laid. 



In 1889 I saw a Black Duck near Fresh Pond on June 9, and in 1893, as I 

 am informed by Mr. Walter Faxon, a nest with eggs was found among some 

 bushes on the top of a hill not far from Great Meadow. On May 12 of the 

 following year a brood of young only a few days old and accompanied by the 

 parent bird was met with by Mr. George C. Shattuck in a brook meadow near 

 the Lyman estate, Waltham, and a few days later another brood was found in 

 Rock Meadow by a farmer who caught and took home five of its members. 

 Since 1894 broods of young or nests with eggs have been reported nearly every 

 season. During the past si.x or seven years one or two pairs of birds have bred 

 regularly in the Fresh Pond Swamps where, on April 19, 1897, I was shown a 

 nest in situ, with its set of thirteen eggs, by my friend, Mr. O. A. Lothrop. 

 Mr. Alfred S. Swan writes me that in 190 1 two ducklings of this species were 

 captured in a bushy swamp near the outlet of the Lower Mystic Pond, Arling- 



