248 THE BIRDS ABOUT Us. 



nigh impossible. The birds are all here, and at times 

 many kinds are congregated, but they have learned 

 from sad experience how dangerous it is to be abroad 

 where man is, and so keep at a long distance. They 

 feed early in the day or in the gloaming, and hide 

 most effectually during the mid-day hours. This is 

 as we find them on the Eastern rivers, but in the 

 West, where they are always far more numerous, they 

 lose much of this excessive caution, and as a conse- 

 quence are slaughtered by the thousands. 



The beautiful wood-duck is still abundant and has 

 been able to hold its own, because of its timidity at 

 certain seasons and ability to hide successfully in the 

 smallest bits of cover. Scenting or hearing danger, 

 it will disappear in a little clump of weeds, and if 

 tracked by a dog, will dive and completely baffle the 

 persistent spaniel. The nesting habits of the wood- 

 duck are thus described by Wilson : 



" On the eighteenth of May I visited a tree containing the nest 

 of a Summer-duck, on the banks of Tuckahoe River, New Jersey. 

 It was an old grotesque white oak, whose top had been torn off by a 

 storm. It stood on the declivity of the bank, about twenty yards 

 from the water. In this hollow and broken top, and about six feet 

 down on the soft decayed wood, lay thirteen eggs snugly covered 

 with down, doubtless taken from the breast of the bird. . . . 



" This tree had been occupied, probably by the same pair, for four 

 successive years in breeding-time ; the person who gave me the in- 

 formation, and whose house was within twenty or thirty yards of the 

 tree, said that he had seen the female, the spring preceding, carry 

 down thirteen young, one by one, in less than ten minutes. She 

 caught them in her bill by the wing or back of the neck, and landed 

 them safely at the foot of the tree, whence she afterwards led them 

 to the water. Under this same tree, at the time I visited it, a large 

 sloop lay on the stocks nearly finished, the deck was not more than 

 twelve feet distant from the nest ; yet notwithstanding the presence 



