548 GAME BIRDS. WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



lead poisoning have been reported from English preserves 

 where game is raised in quantities and much shooting of 

 driven game is practiced. Occasional articles have appeared 

 in the press calling attention to a disease among wild Ducks 

 called "croup," which is caused by lead poisoning. The Ducks 

 are self -poisoned, and their condition is brought about by 

 picking up and swallowing shot. There are some favorite 

 shooting grounds where tons of shot have been fired at wild- 

 fowl. Here the birds, in their search for sand and gravel as 

 an aid to digestion, swallow quantities of shot, which have 

 been scattered over the marshes, along the shores, and in the 

 shallow waters, where Ducks feed. The shot is disintegrated 

 in the stomach by trituration and attrition, and lead particles 

 are absorbed into the tissues. The trouble is common in 

 certain localities among Ducks, Geese and Swans. The symp- 

 toms are a rattling in the throat and the dropping of a yellow- 

 ish fluid from the bill. The bird breathes hard, becomes weak 

 and helpless and finally dies. 



Dissection reveals pellets of lead in the stomach or gizzard, 

 the lining of which becomes corroded and can be picked away 

 in pieces. The intestines and rectum become inflamed and the 

 liver is very dark. At Galveston, Stephenson Lake and Lake 

 Surprise, Tex., at points on Currituck Sound, N. C, and at the 

 Misqually Flats, Puget Sound, many Ducks have been found 

 sick and unable to fly from the effects of this poisoning.^ 



The Destruction of the Feeding Grounds. 



Many correspondents attribute the decrease of wild-fowl 

 and shore birds in Massachusetts to the destruction of their 

 feeding grounds here. The gradual filling up of ponds and 

 estuaries, the damming of streams for commercial purposes, 

 the draining of swamps and meadows in the process of convert- 

 ing them into cranberry bogs, the drying up of small ponds as a 

 result of cutting off the forest cover, the digging over of flats 

 and bay bottoms in getting shell-fish, — all have more or less 

 local effect on the numbers of birds. On Cape Cod the building 



' Grinnell, George Bird: American Duck Shooting, 1901, pp. 598-600. 



