38 WILD FOWL SHOOTING. 
the Summer ducks, come in mild weather, stay with 
us, breed and bring up their young along running 
creeks, where alders and maples, willows and birch bend 
fraternally toward each other across some babbling 
brook, their topmost limbs intertwining affectionately, 
exchanging friendly greetings with each other, as the 
night and day winds of summer cause them to gently 
rub together. 
Such are the places these pou birds frequent, and 
bring up their young. They love to swim in the shal- 
low water, male and female together, surrounded by 
tiny forms of yellow,—their young, all busily engaged 
in nipping tender buds, picking up seeds, or chasing 
some fat. bug as it twinkles on the water. How happy 
they are in such places! Swimming at the side and 
under overhanging banks, that seem like huge bluffs in 
comparison with their diminutive bodies, turning their 
little heads sidewise as they watch a fly or grasshopper, 
as it clings to some waving blade of grass, just on the 
brink of the shore, or watching it with still greater in- 
terest, as it flies or jumps so quickly down on some 
moss-covered stone,—their little stomachs craving the 
delicacy, while their father and mother watch them 
with pride and solicitous interest. Then to see them 
when a fly or bug drops into the water ; the whole flock 
scramble for it in haste, pell-mell, the fortunate one 
gulps it down, fearing no indigestion, while the others, 
foiled, but not discouraged, swim along more deter- 
mined than before. When they reach some old sunken 
log, its black body anchored in the shallow water, the 
little ones discover a perfect horde of bugs floating at its 
edge. The mother clambers on to the log, and bask- 
ing in the sunshine, preens herself, stands up to* her 
a 
