MALLARD. 89 



many places in the Northern Rocky Mountains, where 

 the thermometer often goes to 30 or 40 degrees below 

 zero, mallards may be found throughout the winter 

 living in warm springs or along swift streams, where 

 the current is so rapid that the water never freezes. 

 Thus it is seen that the winter's cold has little to do 

 with the migration of the mallard — or, in fact, with 

 that of many other ducks — and that, if food is plenty, 

 the birds can bear almost any degree of cold. It is the 

 freezing of the waters and thus the shutting off of the 

 food supply that forces these inland birds to move 

 southward. 



In the New England States the mallard is not a 

 common bird, but in the Southern States, the interior 

 and California it is extremely abundant. 



In the northern interior the mallard is shot from 

 early October until the waters close in November, and 

 all through the winter it is abundant in the Southern 

 States. Here it feeds in the marshes along the salt 

 water, in the rice fields and along the sloughs and 

 streams throughout the interior, and becomes fat and 

 well flavored and is eagerly pursued. It comes readily 

 to decoys and if one or more live ducks are tethered 

 with the decoys to call down the wild birds, they are 

 quite certain to respond and to offer easy shooting to 

 the gunner. Formerly the mallard bred in consid- 

 erable numbers within the limits of the United States, 

 though it has never been a common bird at any season 

 on the Atlantic coast north of New York. Yet it 

 used to breed in great numbers in Illinois, Indiana, 



