AMONG THE WatTER Fowt 
necks. Great birds they were, and too wary to 
be approached. 
From here we drove northwest, away up to the 
international boundary, exploring some large lakes 
eastward from the Turtle Mountain region. On the 
30th of May we reached Rock Lake and pitched the 
tent on the prairie close to the stony shore. By this 
time more of the Ducks had laid. I was particu- 
larly fortunate there in finding Blue-winged Teals’ 
nests. The morning after our arrival I was rowing 
on the lake, and happened to land on a sort of pen- 
insula formed on one side by a marshy bayou. The 
land was broken and rolling, but near the shore it 
was flat, almost marshy, and covered with very pro- 
fuse dry grass of the previous year’s growth that 
had escaped the prairie fires. My companion al- 
most trod on a Western Meadow Lark that left her 
arched nest in the grass and six eggs for our inspec- 
tion. Just after this I was returning to the boat, 
when—spring, flutter—away went a Blue-winged 
Teal from the long grass at my very feet. It took 
me but a second to reach the spot, and, parting the 
grass, I gazed into my first Teal’s nest, with its ten 
small, creamy eggs, well spattered with excrement, 
which the bird dropped as she flew. I afterwards 
found that this last is the usual occurrence when a 
Duck is surprised and flushed from her eggs. This 
nest was well down in the thick dry grass, and would 
have been practically impossible to discover without 
flushing the bird. It was built in a hollow in the 
ground, of dry grass, with which the abundant dark 
gray down that lined it was more or less mixed. 
After a few minutes we started on again, and 
180 
