122 CURRITUCK MARSHES. 



been dull and rather quiet, with but a few birds stir- 

 ring all through the morning ; a haze lay upon the 

 marshes, not dense enough to prevent the ducks fly- 

 ing if they had been so minded, which they did not 

 seem to be, the wind scarcely stirred the reeds or 

 rippled the surface of the bay, which was spread out 

 before me. I was making a poor bag and hardly ex- 

 pected to do better, when about midday there came 

 a change over the spirit of the earth and air, the 

 clouds began to condense, the wind commenced to 

 blow, the air became rapidly colder, a thin steak of 

 gray faintly marked the sky in the nothwest, while 

 in the south the clouds grew blacker and denser. 

 Then the rain fell in spits and flurries viciously. 

 The atmosphere intimated a decided change in the 

 weather, which the ducks were the first to recognize 

 and regulate their proceedings by. Evidently avast 

 mass of widgeons were bedded to the lee-ward of us. 

 They commenced to fly not in their individual capac- 

 ity, but as the part of a great movement, as if sud- 

 denly they had made up their minds all to go. In 

 whisps of threes, fours, tens, twenties, in large flocks, 

 or solitary and alone, they came heading towards me 

 directly across the marsh and visible for miles. 

 Then it was that I learned that I was not in exactly 

 the right place, that the birds for some reason best 

 known to themselves did not care to cross that spot 

 'in their migration. Most of them, especially the 

 largest flocks, passed outside of me and just beyond 

 the range, of my gun. I was in the wrong place, I 

 knew it, but I had no time to move, the ducks 



