WILD DUCKS 147 



two years of effort is a remarkable demonstration of what the 

 system above described can accomplish. Two years ago 

 Mr. Walcott bought three pairs of pinioned wood ducks from 

 Wallace Evans, probably stock raised on the Evans' Game 

 Farm. The first season, 1913, forty-five young were hatched 

 of which twenty-six were raised. The first clutches laid 

 were hatched under bantams, but the ducks were allowed 

 to hatch their second layings. Only a few of these were 

 pinioned. The rest migrated away for the winter, but 

 mostly returned in the spring, and nested in the woods ad- 

 joining the lake where they were reared. In the autumn, 

 1914, about seventy of them were staying about this lake. 

 I write these words on the Walcott place in mid-December, 

 1914. The full- winged wood ducks and some of the mallard 

 and black ducks have migrated away, but there are a good 

 number of ducks, about two hundred, keeping a hole open 

 in the ice. Some of them are wild birds which have joined 

 the flock. Flocks of each kind keep flying up, winnowing 

 over the frozen lake and the woods, and then splashing back 

 in showers into the open water, wild birds, too, even when I 

 am standing but a few rods away. 



The Lanier Experiment. It is further possible, by a slight 

 assistance to nature, to establish the breeding of wild ducks 

 in a favourable locality, even without artificial propagation. 

 This has been done in a notable experiment by Charles D. 

 Lanier, at Westchester, Connecticut. He owns a tract of 

 some 3,500 acres of wild land, mostly woods and swamp, 

 in a retired locality. By judicious damming of brooks, 

 areas of swamp have been overflowed, and a chain of flooded 

 marshes and ponds created. Timber in the flooded areas 

 has died and fallen, leaving considerable open water, in which 

 pond lilies and other aquatic plants have taken a start. 

 The place, naturally attractive to ducks, has become still 



