BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 39 



quacks of mutual advisement, or perchance of disappointment, 

 and are soon out of sight. In half an hour they are back 

 again to drop, one after another, into the open water of the 

 very lake beside which we may be carefully concealed. Here, 

 if undisturbed, they will spend the remainder of the day, but 

 when the night has come they quietly fly away to the meadows 

 and growing wheat fields or the oak openings where the mast 

 is an assured supply for their repast. At the earliest dawn of 

 the coming day, they return to the lakes for rest, mussels, 

 aquatic vegetation and security. As they breed extensively in 

 nearly every portion of the State adapted to their reproductive 

 and food habits, little difficulty lies in the way of learning their 

 characteristic habits. I find that as a general thing their nests 

 are completed and occupied by the 15th to the 20th of May. 

 As they deposit from ten to twelve eggs, and supposibly never 

 more than one in the same day, it is pretty near the first of 

 June before they are fully installed in the essential work of in- 

 cubation. Only rather coarse weeds and grasses are employed 

 in the structure of the nest, but it is lined with their own down 

 liberally. The eggs 'are of a dirty, greenish-white color. The 

 location of the nest may be on the veriest margin of the land 

 near the water, concealed in the reeds and rushes, or a mile 

 away, perhaps on the open prairie, hidden by the rank, un- 

 glazed tuft of grass which may be seen at a considerable dis- 

 tance. And again it is no unprecedented thing to find it 

 amongst the coarse bushes on a wooded hillside. The duck- 

 lings are taken to the water in a short time where the 

 brood may often be found without much difficulty, except the 

 sacrifices of an early rising in the morning. They linger in the 

 State until quite in autumn, growing and fattening on the 

 wild rice, mast, and extensive waste of the wheat fields. In 

 the latter place they are often in immense flocks, where the 

 hunters are congregated for their destruction as late and early 

 as the law allows them to maintain their slaughter. As matters 

 have been for many years, their number must have become 

 greatly reduced, and therefore we may well rejoice that our 

 legislature has provided some long needed protection to them. 

 To instance, not one alone of "crack sportsmen," but many 

 from abroad as well as at home have boasted of having killed 

 three and four hundred in a fall shooting, and in a single in- 

 stance upwards of one thousand. This is truly duck murder. 

 Thirteen thousand meandered, and therefore recorded lakes 



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