328 Bk^t, Nesting Habits of AtiatidcE in N. Dakota. \o^. 



one, more fortunate than Mr. Faxon and I have been, succeeds 

 either in shooting or in getting a good view of the bird while it is 

 in the act of uttering its characteristic notes. On the whole I am 

 glad, rather than the reverse, to be compelled to leave the matter 

 thus unsettled for I should not like to feel that even so thoroughly 

 worked a region as that immediately about Cambridge is wholly 

 without the charm which attends all mvsteries. 



NESTING HABITS OF THE ANATID.'E IN NORTH 



DAKOTA. 



BY A. C. BENT. 



Plates IV- VI. 

 From photographs by the author. 



I SPENT the last few days of May and the first half of June of 

 the present year, accompanied by Rev. Herbert K. Job, of Kent, 

 Conn., and part of the time, by Dr. Louis B. Bishop, of New 

 Haven, Conn., in the lake region of central North Dakota, prin- 

 cipally in the vicinity of Devils Lake, along the Sheyenne River 

 to the soutliward, through Nelson County and in Steele County. 

 Tlie prairie region naturally comprises by far the greater part of, 

 in fact, nearly all, of the territory covered by our observations. 

 Throughout the eastern portion of North Dakota, particularly in 

 the Red River Valley, where the land is flat and level, and in 

 Steele County, we found the prairie under complete cultivation 

 and sow'n with wheat or flax wherever the land was level enough 

 or dry enough for the purpose. In these farming districts the 

 meadow lands, too wet for cultivation, were generally mowed for 

 hay. In many cases sloughs and small pond holes were drained 

 for irrigation purposes or to make meadow land ; so that bird life 

 was confined to the larger sloughs, the tree claims, and the occa- 

 sional strips of uncultivated prairie. Farther west, from Nelson 

 County westward, there is much less cultivated land and the 

 wild rolling land of the virgin prairie is only here and there broken 

 by farms with a few hundred acres of wheat fields surrounding 

 each farmhouse. Here we could drive for miles over the un- 



