■ UPLAND SHOOTING. 127 



• * 



mother carries them to it, one by one, in her bill, holding them 

 so as not to injure their yet tender frames. 



" Those which breed in Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova 

 Scotia, move southward as soon as the frosts commence, and 

 none are known to spend the winter so far North. I have been 

 much surprised to find Wilson speaking of the Wood Ducks 

 as a species of which more than five or six individuals are 

 seldom seen together. A would-be naturalist in America, who 

 has had better opportunities of knowing its habits than the 

 admired author of the ' American Ornithology,' repeats the 

 same error; and I am told, believes that all his statements are 

 considered true. For my own part, I have seen hundreds in a 

 single flock, and have known fifteen to be killed by a single 

 shot. They, however, raise only one brood in the course of 

 the season, unless their eggs or young are destroyed. In this 

 case the female soon finds means of recalling her mate from the 

 flock which he has joined." — Audubon'' s Birds of America. 



The discrepant statements, alluded to in the last paragraph, 

 concerning the gregarious habits of the Wood Duck, may be 

 probably accounted for by the difference of the bird's manners 

 in different localities. I have never myself seen above eight or 

 nine of these birds together, and I presume that along the 

 Atlantic seaboard, they are rarely seen in greater numbers. 

 On the Great Lakes, and in the unbounded solitudes of the 

 West, they doubtless congregate, as do many other species, in 

 vast flocks. 



There is nothing which it behoves the observer of natural 

 history more to guard against than a tendency to convert local 

 or accidental peculiarities of individuals into settled habits of 

 species. All wild animals appear to accommodate themselves 

 with infinite facility to circumstances, and to adapt their man- 

 ners to the necessities of the regions in which they chance to 

 be thrown, more readily than is generally suspected. In one 

 place, a species is solitary ; in another, gregarious in its cus- 

 toms — here it is migratory, there domestic ; and to positive and 



