AMONG THE WATER FowL 
episode. I had been arduously wading a very boggy 
area of rushes, a sort of bayou back from a lake. 
Nothing especial had come to light, and I was 
struggling absent-mindedly on, when I almost trod 
on a bird upon its nest in some thick rushes. It 
fluttered out in the terrified, pitiful manner of the 
Ducks, literally right from under my feet, a brown- 
ish Duck of medium size, with pearl-grey specula, 
or wing-bars. Without going very far, it alit in 
some open water, where I approached it within a 
few feet, behind some rushes, and confirmed my 
first impression that it was a female Ring-necked 
Scaup, distinguished from the other female Scaups 
by its wing-bars being pearl-grey instead of white. 
After thus satisfying myself I went back to where 
I had thrown my handkerchief by the nest. There 
was a pretty canopy of rushes arching over the 
neatly built basket, soft with down from the mater- 
nal breast, in which lay twelve dark brown eggs 
almost the color of Bitterns’. It was the only nest 
of the Ring-necked Scaup found during the whole 
trip. 
Owing to the illness of my companion we soon 
had to leave the ‘‘mountains’’ and stay in a neigh- 
boring town for a few days. With a boy for com- 
pany, I explored the region. One hot day, June 
18, we drove twenty miles to Long Lake,—a great 
alkaline flat, it was, covered with a uniform depth 
of only two or three feet of water, with great areas 
of grass and scattered clumps of rushes. I had 
been told that Canvasbacks nested here, and after 
an arduous search, finding several Ducks’ nests 
where the broods had been hatched, a female Can- 
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