BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 



39 



tions which effectually prevented them from taking any really unfair or discour- 

 teous advantage of one another. 



If, as was occasionally the case, the birds proved to be Black Ducks or 

 other equally wary water-fowl, they were sure to take wing long before the 

 nearest boat was within gun-range ; but if Ruddy Ducks, Scaups, Old-squaws or 

 Scoters, there was ordinarily little difficulty in approaching them closely. The 

 Ruddy Ducks were especially tame. Until shot at, they seldom dove and 

 frequently did not fly, but on the near approach of a boat they always began 

 swimming in the opposite direction, using their broad and powerful feet so 

 effectively that it was not easy to overtake them, and spreading out over so 

 wide a space that it was difficult to get more than two together or in line, 

 although as many as three or four were occasionally killed at one shot. I have 

 known a large flock to continue thus swimming after both barrels of a gun had 

 been discharged into their midst, but those which had received no injury 

 usually rose at the report and flew to some distant part of the pond. They 

 seemed to profit little by experience, for it was often as easy to approach them 

 a second or third time as on the first occasion. After they had been fired at 

 repeatedly, however, they would scatter, and, when hard pressed, take to diving, 

 at which they were almost as adroit as Grebes, disappearing with marvelous 

 quickness and exposing only their heads on returning to the surface to breathe. 

 If the water happened to be rough, a few sometimes escaped in this way. 

 After a flock had been once broken up, its surviving members were never 

 known to leave the pond until the following night, however much they might 

 be persecuted. When, as occasionally happened, two or three good-sized flocks 

 appeared the same morning and were successively dispersed, there was plenty 

 of sport for every one, and the reports of the heavily charged guns, coming in 

 quick succession from different parts of the pond, were heard at places as far 

 distant as Harvard Square. Indeed the firing was so rapid and incessant at 

 times as to suggest that of a brisk skirmish, but, as six or eight shots were 

 often required to kill a single bird, the total bag was not so great as the noise 

 indicated. In fact, it was exceptional for more than fifteen or twenty Ducks to 

 be killed in a single morning, although I have known the number to reach forty 

 or fifty. By no means all the flocks which appeared over the pond alighted 

 there, and many of the birds that did alight, including some of the Ruddy 

 Ducks, were too shy to be approached. On an average probably over half of 

 the Ducks that actually settled in the pond were killed, and of this half the 

 Dumb-birds represented considerably more than fifty per cent. 



Most of the sportsmen who followed the early morning shooting were 

 obliged, for one or another reason, to return to their homes before eight o'clock. 

 The scattered birds which they left, with perhaps others that had come in later. 



