8o4 THE BUFFLEHEAD. 
Brackish pools and tide channels, tide flats and tossing billows, all are alike to 
these happy and hardy little souls. Perhaps the greatest number, however, 
are found upon the bays and shallower waters of Puget Sound. They associate 
chiefly in little flocks of from half a dozen to fifty individuals and they venture 
inshore, as often as they dare, to feed on the rising tide. When they reach us 
Butterball” ), but they 
have gained their flesh on the cleaner feeding grounds of the northern interior. 
On a fare of fish and marine worms, which they obtain in salt water almost 
entirely by diving, their flesh soon becomes rank and unprofitable. 
in October they are fat as butter (whence, of course, 
Naturally confiding and easily approachable in the fall, the Bufflehead 
soon acquires powder-experience, and gradually becomes the most difficult of 
all birds to kill. He will not only give the hunter a wide berth, but he will dive 
at the flash of a gun. He is clad, moreover, in a magic coat of mail, and his 
plumage appears to shed bullets as readily as it does water. No hunter but 
feels that the bird is a little uncanny, and he has his little collection of stories 
to back up his belief. For instance, from the vantage of a river bank and at 
close range, I once shot a drake Butterball seven times with “4’s’’—hit around 
him every time too, but did not learn the flavor of his flesh. Another cut down 
in midair with 2's fell limp as any pigeon, but received magic restoration from 
the water, arose upon the instant and flew away as tho nothing had happened. 
\nd then, to cap the climax, if not killed outright at the first shot, the bird will 
commit suicide by drowning. On tide flats, with never a ghost of a chance at 
concealment, we have seen birds dive and remain below, self-entangled in the 
eel-grass, until death by drowning was certain. This fact is well established, 
not only in the case of Buffleheads, but in that of many other ducks; and car- 
casses have been found in the eel-grass at low tide in bays which are much shot 
over. 
by Warburton Pike. 
