IN THE HAUNTS OF 



101 



from breeding places on quaking bogs and inland peat beds, where 

 they have reared their young amid the wild solitudes which only 

 the frigid zone affords. They differ from the fish eaters in that 

 they take a lofty plane of flight, and a direct cross-country course, 

 not following the coast-line. Most wing their way direct to the 

 sunny savannahs of the South, but some call occasional halts for 

 a bivouac at favourite feeding places on their route ; becoming 

 objects of hot pursuit on the Atlantic bays, where they are shot 

 at from ' sink boxes ' over decoys ; on the stubble of Nebraska 

 cornfields, where they are destroyed from the ambush of sandpits ; 

 and on the sand-bars of the Mississippi, where they are stalked 

 from the stealthy scull-boat. 



A MARVELLOUS STREAM OF FEATHERED LIFE. 



They will run the same gauntlet of foes when on their return 

 voyage in the spring ; over plains and mountains still clad in snow ; 

 over ice-bound lakes and rivers, an imperious instinct of making 

 their breeding haunts inaccessible to enemies drives them on clang- 

 ing pinions back to the stern North again ; their welcome ' ah-hunk ' 

 saluting the ear, the first announcement of the finish of winter's 

 reign, and their thin aerial line the first prophecy of the advent of 

 spring days to the Canadians. 



So fond are these fowls of the Arctic Zone, that it has been 

 suggested they may have originated around the North Pole when 

 that region enjoyed a temperate or tropical climate, as stated 

 by geologists, but were forced southwards by the ice-cap of the 



