CONTRACTION OF FEEDING GROUNDS. 593 



CONTRACTION OF FEEDING GROUNDS. 



Certain natural conditions have, at various times 

 within the past few years, tended to injure the shooting 

 of the Chesapeake Bay region. On a number of occa- 

 sions great floods have swept down alluvium and drift 

 stuff from the rivers, covering large portions of the 

 feeding grounds, and thus destroyed the food. At other 

 times, unusual cold has frozen the waters over the shal- 

 lower flats, quite to the bottom, killing or tearing up 

 by the roots the grass on which the fowl feed. Of 

 course, such wholesale destruction of the food prevents 

 the fowl from visiting the grounds until the grass has 

 re-established itself once more, and this is a very slow 

 process. 



It is reported, also, and probably with truth, that 

 many of the flats which formerly were excellent feed- 

 ing grounds for the canvas-back and other fowl, are 

 constantly filling up, and becoming too shoal for cer- 

 tain kinds of duck food to grow. This, if true, must in 

 time very greatly reduce the area of the feeding 

 grounds, and the result of this will be not to concen- 

 trate the birds on the diminished area, but to drive them 

 to other localities. 



In the Chesapeake Bay, as also in certain bays on 

 Long Island, there has been in the past great complaint 

 that ducks were caught in nets set over their feeding 

 grounds. The nets are placed close to the bottom, 



