218 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



fawns born this spring, instead of the cows that 

 have called that ground their home for the last fifty 

 years, are browsing in sight of the house, among 

 some young white birches that are growing in a 

 typical wild pasture lot of about seventy-five acres. 



There are three other ponds on this place, and 

 last spring several broods of black ducks were 

 reared on each. Two of the ponds are natural 

 water-holes, and the other two are artificial. The 

 former were reclaimed by putting in small stone 

 dams where the weather of years had destroyed the 

 handicraft of pioneer lumbermen. The latter are 

 streams dammed at points where narrow breaks in 

 the ground permitted of short, inexpensive timber 

 and earth structures. 



Between two and three thousand black ducks 

 drop into the home pond each fall and remain until 

 late December before going farther south ; and each 

 fall and spring, from forty to fifty wild Canada 

 geese stay with our geese several days, for food. A 

 snow goose caught in a fish net on Long Island 

 Sound last fall, and sent to us after being wing- 

 clipped, has become perfectly tame, and is now 

 flying about as naturally as she did in the wild 

 state. A wing-tipped cackling goose, wounded at 

 Horn Point, Virginia, near Currituck Sound (the 

 only record of this bird on the Atlantic coast) , was 

 brought to the preserve in January, 1913, and 

 liberated. The broken wing soon healed, allowing 

 her to fly perfectly, and this bird has twice declined 



