38 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



when at length he saw the duck standing, still alive and 

 bleeding, by the side of a stump, and made out to kill 

 liim with a stick before he could reach the water. 



April 9, 1856. Paddled quite to the head of Pinxter 

 Swamp, where were two black ducks amid the maples, 

 which went off with a hoarse quacking, leaving a feather 

 on the smooth dark water amid the fallen tree-tops and 

 over the bottom of red leaves. 



April 14, 1856. There go a couple of ducks, which 

 probably I have started, now scaling far away on mo- 

 tionless pinions, with a slight descent in their low flight, 

 toward some new cove. Anon I scare up two black ducks 

 which make one circle around me, reconnoitring and 

 rising higher and higher, then go down the river. Is it 

 they that so commonly practice this manceuvre ? 



June 23, 1857. Skinner, the harness-maker, tells me 

 that he found a black duck's nest Sunday before the last, 

 i. e. the 14th, with perhaps a dozen eggs in it, a mere 

 hollow on the top of a tussock, four or five feet within 

 a clump of bushes forming an islet (in the spring) in 

 Hubbard's great meadow. He scared up the duck when 

 within a few feet. . . . 



P. M. — Looked for the black duck's nest, but could 

 find no trace of it. Probably the duck led her young to 

 the river as soon as hatched. What with gunners, dogs, 

 pickerel, bullfrogs, hawks, etc., it is a wonder if any of 

 them escape. 



«/zf 7ie 24, 1857. Melvin^ thinks there cannot be many 

 black ducks' nests in the town, else his dog would find 

 them, for he will follow their trail as well as another 



^ [George Melvin, a Concord gunner and fisherman.] 



