No. 4.] REPORT OF STATE ORNITHOLOGIST. 401 



here. In a conversation with Lord William Percy, the orni- 

 thologist of Alnwick Castle, Northumberland, England, he told 

 me that on at least one estate in England it is the custom to trap 

 wild fowl shortly before the nesting season opens, and to clip 

 one wing of each bird, cutting off the feathers very close to the 

 wing. These birds, being clipped and penned, can be later 

 caught again, and the stumps of the quills pulled out. Lender 

 these circumstances, it takes twenty-one days to reproduce the 

 feathers. The object of this clipping is to induce the birds to 

 stay and nest. By the time their quills are grown out and they 

 are able to fly, the season has become so advanced that they are 

 ready to nest, and usually will nest in the locality in which they 

 find themselves. Young birds raised in a locality, of course, 

 will come back and breed there again, and in this way a breed- 

 ing stock of wild birds is established. 



No doubt the same plan might succeed in this country. A 

 few years ago, the spring in the west being late and cold, many 

 wild fowl remained to breed in Texas. 



Lord Percy makes a special study of wild fowl. He came to 

 this country mainly to study the Eider ducks, particularly the 

 Spectacled Eider (Ardonetta fischeri) now believed to be nearly 

 extinct. He passed a part of the summer of 1914 in Alaska 

 and northern Siberia, where the few remaining individuals of 

 that species now exist, but went home to join his regiment after 

 the outbreak of the European war. 



Wild Fowl starving in Winter. 

 In February, 1914, severe cold weather froze over the flats 

 along the coast of southern New England, depriving many wild 

 fowl of their food. There is reason to believe that some birds 

 perished of starvation and cold. There were great flocks of 

 black ducks and golden-eyes in Boston Harbor. The authorities 

 at Thompson's Island fed the black ducks with grain, and as all 

 shooting is illegal within the limits of Boston, the birds were 

 well protected and apparently none died from cold and starva- 

 tion. Much suffering was reported, however, among wild fowl 

 in southeastern Massachusetts, and the deputies of the Massa- 

 chusetts Commission on Fisheries and Game were instructed to 



