Monthly Bulletin 5 



marsh during the summer time have a picturesque value which is much 

 greater than their value as food. If Cape Cod only knew it it would be 

 money in its pocket to let these larger wild fowl, ducks, geese and swans, 

 increase until the summer visitors could find them plentiful and watch them 

 at leisure. The sight of them would bring far more money into the Cape 

 towns than the shooting of them. Several swans, liberated by the Park 

 Commission but semi-wild, fly and swim about the Charles River Basin this 

 spring. No doubt some people would welcome an opportunity to shoot 

 these. Fortunately the authorities know they are worth a hundred times 

 more alive and free than they would be dead. 



Wild swans were once common along our coast in time of migration 

 but now are practically never seen. Some years ago three appeared off 

 Nantucket and were promptly shot. Some men with a gun seem absolutely 

 unable to resist shooting at any large object which flies over. Balloonists 

 and drivers of airplanes know this and, in times of peace, occasionally 

 report that a rifle bullet has whizzed by them, sent aloft by some man who 

 wishes them no harm but cannot resist this curious impulse. Most of us 

 are not yet completely civilized and the desire to bag big game, latent) very 

 likely in the best of us, comes to the surface when great birds like swans 

 fly by. Theoretically the law protects the swan at all times, though it did 

 not protect the three at Nantucket, and all who love the picturesque in bird 

 life will hope that these great wild birds may again be seen and heard on 

 our shores. The world progresses, slowly. Perhaps if three swans were 

 now to appear off Nantucket they would not be shot but invited to remain 

 and decoy summer visitors. 



They talk of mining the region about Verdun for the thousands of tons 

 of steel scattered there by exploding shells. In the same way at certain 

 favorable hunting points along the coast or on the margins of ponds where 

 ducks have been shot at for generations there must be large accumulations 

 of lead. Whether these might be profitably mined or not may be an open 

 question, but the presence of the lead is indubitable. This has worked out 

 in a strange way to the detriment of wild fowl down in Currituck Sound 

 off the coast of North Carolina. This Sound is a paradise for the hunters 

 of wild fowl, and thousands are still slain there yearly though the season 

 is now much restricted by the Federal law. Herbert K. Job, the ornithol- 

 ogist, reports that so large a proportion of shot is mingled with the gravel 

 of the beaches there, in some places, that the geese which come ashore for 

 gravel for their crops take with it a certain amount of shot. Lead is a slow 

 poison and the birds that thus eat it die of lead-poisoning after a time, 

 being found floating about the Sound in all stages of paralysis. It might 

 be too much to ask the hunters to shoot an antidote with their lead but it 

 seems a pity to lose the birds by poison after they have escaped the direct 

 action of the gun. 



