492 Annals of the Carnegie Museum. 



decrease is noticeable, too, in the numbers of ducks and waders, but 

 I think that the curtailing of their feeding-grounds and the continual 

 persecution to which they are subjected from the moment of their 

 arrival has led them to seek more secluded localities. In October, 

 1 90 1, there was an almost unprecedented flight of 'pond-ducks' 

 (AtiatincB), and in some cases bags of thirty, forty, and even fifty 

 birds were made. I saw a bag of forty-two (mostly Mallards) killed 

 on the morning of October 1 7 by two gunners. This hardly looks 

 as though the ducks were a thing of the past, and yet the next season 

 there may be no shooting of any consequence. Presque Isle Bay is 

 the only feeding-ground of any size for many miles on the south side 

 of Lake Erie, but with si.xty thousand people living right at its shore, 

 the ducks have little chance to feed. The shallow water species, such 

 as the Mallard, Black Duck, Teal, Widgeon, Wood Duck, Pintail, and 

 Hooded Merganser are found in the ponds and along the bay shore of 

 the western portion of the Peninsula. These kinds, particularly the 

 Mallard, when persistently hunted, will fly out into the middle of the 

 bay to spend the day, returning at dusk to the ponds, where I have 

 watched them feeding in the moonlight. The Scaups, Redheads, 

 Golden-eyes, Buffleheads, Scoters, Long-tailed Ducks, and Red-breasted 

 Mergansers are found in the deeper waters of the bay, or rather would 

 be found there if unmolested, but, so accustomed have they become to 

 being disturbed, that daylight generally sees them on the move for the 

 main lake, where, if it is not too rough, they spend the day, returning 

 to the bay about dusk. This is of course not the invariable rule for all 

 the deep water ducks, for some stay on the bay in spite of the gunners, 

 and some species would no doubt go to the lake to feed in any case. 

 In flying to and from the lake the ducks either cross the narrow neck 

 of the Peninsula to the west, or go over the breakwater pier at the 

 eastern end of the bay, which place has been a famous ducking point 

 in years past. 



"The shore-birds would seem to have fallen off considerably in 

 numbers in the last six years, but in this period there has been 

 very little low water, and the flats at the mouth of Mill Creek have 

 grown up with weeds to such an extent that their favorite feeding- 

 grounds are greatly diminished. Many species have seemed to be almost 

 if not quite unrepresented of late years. The fall flight of Red-backed 

 Sandpipers was formerly looked forward to as being as certain as the 

 close of navigation, yet there has been no flight of these birds since 



