AMONG THE WaTER FowL 
twelve eggs, about to hatch. After photographing 
them I replaced the bough, and when I passed the 
spot again two days later, scattered egg-shells told 
of another brood added to the Duck-farm of the 
Magdalen Islands. 
We had poor success in finding ‘‘Shell-ducks’ ”’ 
nests—as the Mergansers are here locally called. 
A boy found an incomplete set under a spruce tree 
in the woods, and a dog broke up a couple of simi- 
larly placed nests on a densely spruce-grown island, 
but all I found was that one egg (mentioned above). 
Most of the females were still with their mates out 
on the ponds, and evidently, this year at any rate, 
incubation did not begin till July. Some of them 
nest in the grass by the shores, but their general 
practice is, | was told, to lay under the dense low 
spruces, often well into the tangled woods, in 
almost impenetrable thickets. Hence their nests 
are very hardite 
find, even when 
the birds are in- 
cubating. They 
are very abundant 
on these islands. 
The ‘eggs areyer 
a drab: colomea 
little lighter than 
those of tite 
EGGS, ABOUT TO HATCH.”’ NEST OF BLUE-WINGED Scaups, and quite 
TEAL, MAGDALEN ISLANDS shiny. Their rel- 
atives, the Goosander and the Hooded Merganser, 
as well as the American Golden-eye, are said to 
breed in the eastern Provinces and in Maine, all 
“I LIFTED THE BOUGH, AND THERE WERE TWELVE 
21LO 
