WILD DUCKS 119 



duck-feed, like wild rice or wild celery, can be started, so 

 much the better, though ducks on a small pond are apt to 

 exterminate it. 



Islands. Out in the great wildfowl-breeding country of 

 the Northwest there is no location more certain to harbour 

 the nests of wild ducks than islets in lonely lakes, preferably 

 overgrown with a tangle of low vegetation or thick grass. 

 On one such grassy island in a large lake in Saskatchewan 

 A. C. Bent and I found, in June, 1905, over one hundred 

 wild ducks' nests. In the grass or under low bushes were 

 nesting the pintail, mallard, gadwall, baldpate, shoveller, 

 blue-winged, green-winged, and cinnamon teals, greater and 

 lesser scaups. White-winged scoters and American mer- 

 gansers were flying about and certainly had nests. In the 

 rushes just out from shore we found nests of the canvasback 

 and redhead, and the ruddy duck also was nesting there- 

 On the island I saw a brood of young Canada geese with 

 their parents. So here, on one rather small island, were 

 nesting sixteen species of native American wildfowl. 



Islands are naturally so popular as nesting-sites that in a 

 pond for artificial rearing it would be an admirable feature 

 if there could be at least one island overgrown with thick 

 grass and weeds. Where there are no islets, such might be 

 constructed or some substitute afforded. An ingenious 

 device is used on the Walcott estate in the main wildfowl 

 pond. Here and there posts have been driven in the water, 

 some rods out from shore, and board platforms have been 

 built, just far enough out of water to be safe from flooding 

 in heavy rains. Sloping boardwalks lead up from the water. 

 The platforms resemble islands, being fixed up with corn- 

 stalks, rushes, grass, and brush. They prove to be popular 

 nesting-places for both ducks and geese. 

 Avoid the Artificial. About the worst possible arrange- 



