Waterfowl. 59 



We had a long distance to make that day, and after 

 leaving the grain fields travelled pretty steadily, only get- 

 ting out of the wagon once or twice after prairie chickens. 

 At lunch time we halted near a group of small ponds and 

 reedy sloughs. In these were quite a number of teal and 

 wood-duck, which were lying singly, in pairs, or small 

 bunches, on the edges of the reeds, or where there were 

 thick clusters of lily pads ; and we had half an hour's 

 good sport in "jumping" these little ducks, moving cau- 

 tiously along the margin of the reeds, keeping as much as 

 possible concealed from view, and shooting four teal and 

 a wood-duck, as, frightened at our near approach, they 

 sprang into the air and made off. Late in the evening, 

 while we were passing over a narrow neck of land that 

 divided two small lakes, with reedy shores, from each 

 other, a large flock of the usually shy pintail duck passed 

 over us at close range, and we killed two from the wagon, 

 making in all a bag of twenty-one and a half couple of 

 water-fowl during the day, two thirds falling to my broth- 

 er's gun. Of course this is a very small bag indeed com- 

 pared to those made in the Chesapeake, or in Wisconsin 

 and the Mississippi valley ; but the day was so perfect, 

 and there were so many varieties of shooting, that I ques- 

 tion if any bag, no matter how large, ever gave much 

 more pleasure to the successful sportsman than did our 

 forty-three ducks to us. 



Though ducks fly so fast, and need such good shooting 

 to kill them, yet their rate of speed, as compared to that 

 of other birds, is not so great as is commonly supposed. 

 Hawks, for instance, are faster. Once, on the prairie, I 



