318 WILDFOWL ON PRESERVED WATERS. 



large flocks of ducks, teal, widgeon, etc., will con- 

 stantly remain there by day, and will even allow 

 people to walk along near the water's edge, within 

 easy gun-shot of them, without taking flight. Single 

 birds feeding* near the margins of the pool will on 

 these occasions sometimes rise up with a loud " quack, " 

 but only fly as far as the centre of the pool before 

 they alight again thus showing how quickly these 

 otherwise exceedingly wild and wary birds become 

 aware of the security of these protected quarters; for 

 these same birds on neighbouring waters which are 

 not preserved, and where they are constantly shot at, 

 will, during their occasional visits to them, prove 

 exceedingly wild, and will fly up the moment a man 

 approaches within 200 or 300 yards. 



Mr. Robert Gray, a Scotch ornithological writer, 

 mentions some very remarkable cases of this kind, 

 quite worthy of reproduction here 



" Mr. Macdonald (he says) has informed me that he has 

 seen hundreds of mallards on a mill dam near Moneymusk, 

 Aberdeenshire, which were so tame as to come to the call 

 of a miller who fed them. This man no sooner made his 

 appearance and uttered the peculiar whistle that they were 

 accustomed to hear, than the ducks came flying in from all 

 parts of the pond and the surrounding marshes, and alighted 

 within a few yards of where he stood throwing out handfuls 

 of corn. No stranger however could ever prevail on them 

 to approach." 



Again he goes on to relate that a writer in " The 

 Field Naturalist" (publ. London 1883, Vol. i., p. 507) 

 states 



" that a gentleman in Forfarshire, whose property was bounded 

 on one side by the River Esk, was accustomed to amuse 



