^°\^f ^^] Fleming, The Niagara Swan Trap. ' 447 



water with long poles, waiting for birds to float in, the river was 

 open, and only a few cakes of ice coming over the Falls ; there was 

 a large mound of ice rising from the rocks below Goat Island. 

 The outlet of the power company on the American side discharges 

 just below the first bridge and, sending a great volume of water 

 across the river, creates an eddy at the landing so that any bird 

 coming down the river with the current is checked below the 

 bridge, sent across the river, and up to the 'Maid of the Mist' 

 landing within reach of the watchers on the breakwater. Mr. 

 Leblond tells me that he first heard swans calling at daybreak on 

 the 6th and they very soon began to float in. He did not say 

 how many of these were alive. There was a slight fog on the 

 river at daybreak. During the day he took seventy out of the 

 river and thinks that fifty or sixty more were taken by others, 

 probably more than 125 altogether; besides these there were four 

 more taken today, and I saw two in the eddy and was told there 

 were more on the shore further down. Besides these there were 

 ten swans alive in the river below the Falls. The birds taken yes- 

 terday were at the Hotel Lafayette where Mr. H. Williams 

 showed me sixty of Mr. Leblond's birds. He considers the total 

 catch nearer 200 than 125. All the young birds, except one, had 

 been picked out for eating, so the proportion of young to adults 

 was probably one in seven. Everyone agrees that this flight was 

 greater than the one in 1908, and that many more were taken 

 this time in spite of there being no ice bridge; the birds I ex- 

 amined were less battered up than in 1908 and could not have 

 been long in the water, as they were dry, that is the feathers were 

 not water logged. The birds exhibited a very interesting series 

 of eye spots, one very small adult having a solid lemon yellow spot 

 extending forward from the eye for nearly an inch and a quarter; 

 the color of the spots ran from lemon yellow to flesh yellow. In 

 1908 the spots ran from yellow to red owing, no doubt, to the ice 

 crushing the birds had received, and the subsequent freezing. 



The ten birds remaining alive on the river below the Falls were 

 divided into two flocks, one of which was on the American side, 

 the other on the Canadian; these I watched both from the river 

 level and from the bank above. They were continually floating 

 down the river with the current, and, taking wing, would fly up 



