AMERICAN MERGANSER 25 



would wake up enough to plume himself. It seemed as 

 if they must have been broken of their sleep and were 

 trying to make it up, having an arduous journey before 

 them, for we had seen them all disturbed and on the 

 wing within half an hour. They were headed various 

 ways. Now and then they seemed to see or hear or smell 

 us, and uttered a low note of alarm, something like the 

 note of a tree-toad, but very faint, or perhaps a little 

 more wiry and like that of pigeons, but the sleepers 

 hardly lifted their heads for it. How fit that this note 

 of alarm should be made to resemble the croaking of a 

 frog and so not betray them to the gunners ! They ap- 

 peared to sink about midway in the water, and their 

 heads were all a rich reddish brown, their throats white. 

 Now and then one of the watchmen would lift his head 

 and turn his bill directly upward, showing his white 

 throat. 



There were some black or dusky ducks in company 

 with them at first, apparently about as large as they, 

 but more alarmed. Their throats looked straw-colored, 

 somewhat like a bittern's, and I saw their shovel bills. 

 These soon sailed further off. 



At last we arose and rushed to the shore within three 

 rods of them, and they rose up with a din, — twenty- 

 six mergansers (I think all femailes), ten black ducks, 

 — and five golden-eyes from a little further off, also 

 another still more distant flock of one of these kinds. 

 The black ducks alone uttered a sound, their usual 

 hoarse quack. They all flew in loose array, but the three 

 kinds in separate flocks. We were surprised to find 

 ourselves looking on a company of birds devoted to 



