458 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



not improbable that some of them bred here, as the wood 

 duck and black duck still do to some extent. 



The wood duck, the most beautiful of all ducks, once bred 

 abundantly throughout New England. In Massachusetts it 

 has been growing rarer near the coast for years, but has 

 been fairly common in parts of most of the inland counties 

 until the latter part of the last century. In this inquiry no 

 questions were asked regarding the wood duck, but informa- 

 tion comes from Berkshire, Worcester, Essex, Middlesex, 

 Norfolk, Plymouth and Bristol counties that this bird is rap- 

 idly decreasing, or gone. Fourteen observers speak of the 

 bird as follows : extinct, three ; nearing extinction, five ; 

 decreasing, three ; decreasing until the last two years, one ; 

 holding their own, two. Some of these reports come from 

 regions where the wood duck has always been a common 

 bird. In other sections its absence has now ceased to at- 

 tract notice. My own experience with the wood ducks 

 seems to indicate that they are decreasing rapidly. A few 

 years ago they were occasionally seen in small flocks during 

 the breeding season ; this year I saw but one in the migra- 

 tions at Concord. This bird, a fine male, was comparatively 

 tame, and I might have shot him on three different occa- 

 sions. He was finally killed by a gunner. This species is 

 not so wary as many other ducks. It often haunts small 

 streams and ponds which can be shot across. Where gun- 

 ners find a family of these birds, it is not very difficult for 

 them to get every one. Mr. Edwin R. Lewis, one of the 

 bird commissioners of Rhode Island, wrote me from West- 

 erly, on Dec. 19, 1904, that wood ducks had been only oc- 

 casionally seen that year, and that he knew of only ten of 

 these birds having been killed during the season. In 1901 

 Dr. A. K. Fisher of the United States Biological Survey 

 predicted that the wood duck and the woodcock would 

 become extinct, unless better protected.* This prediction 

 now seems in a fair way to be realized, so far as wood ducks 

 breeding in Massachusetts are concerned. 



The American widgeon or baldpate was formerly seen 



* "Two vanishing game birds," A. K. Fisher, Year Book of the Department 

 of Agriculture for 1901, published in 1902. 



