General. Notes 129 



of Yellow Locust some twenty feet high. The ground below being 

 almost barren of undergrowth it was not unlike the floor of a 

 pinery. One side of the pit is bounded by the wooded bank of a 

 stream, upon which were a few white pines and some hemlock. 

 She was hunting the branches and leaf fronds for food, and kept 

 very quiet, uttering only a soft low " seep, seep," when about to 

 fly from one tree to another. 



E. A. DOOLITTLE. 



Painesville, Ohio, Lake County. 



WATERFOWL DIE FROM EATING SHOT 



Wild ducks and other waterfowl sometimes die from lead 

 poisoning resulting from swallowing stray shot which they pick 

 out of the mud about shooting grounds. Many ducks that become 

 sick from lead poisoning finally recover, but it is probable that 

 the effect is permanently injurious not only to the individual but 

 to the species. It has been ascertained by experiment that lead 

 greatly impairs the virility of male domestic fowls. Females 

 mated with them lay many infertile eggs, while in many of the 

 eggs that are fertilized the embryo dies in the shell or the chick 

 emerges weak and unable to withstand the hardships of early life. 

 What effect lead poisoning has on female wild fowl has not been 

 definitely ascertained, but, as the fact is well known that lead pro- 

 duces abortion in female mammals, there is a possibility that it 

 exerts a bad effect on female waterfowl during the breeding sea- 

 son. Thus, the supply of waterfowl is likely to be decreased by 

 lead poisoning not only by the number of birds that die directly 

 from it but indirectly by impairment of reproduction. 



These facts are set forth by the United States Department of 

 Agriculture in Bulletin 793, " Lead Poisoning in Waterfowl," about 

 to be published as a contribution from the Bureau of Biological 

 Survey. Reports of waterfowl apparently sick from lead poison- 

 ing have been coming in for several years. The Biological Survey 

 undertook an investigation at various shooting grounds to detei'- 

 mine how common the taking of shot by waterfowl is, and a series 

 of experiments to ascertain the effect of shot swallowed. It was 

 found that at places where much shooting is regularly done from 

 blinds, shot at the bottom of the shallow water are so numerous 

 that one or more was found in practically every sieveful of mud 

 or silt, and that they are swallowed by waterfowl whenever found 

 as a result of this habit of swallowing small, hard objects to sup- 

 ply grit for the gizzard. 



The experiments have shown that shot swallowed are gradu- 

 ally ground away in the gizzard and pass into the intestines, pro- 



