Bird-Nesting 



CHAPTER XII. 



UNE 13th. This morning I visited the marshes 

 bordering Rush Lake, and followed the creek for 

 two miles, disturbing numerous broods of young 

 ducks, which were swimming in the creek. If I 

 had visited this creek early in May I should have been 

 able to collect scores of ducks' eggs, as this appeared to be 

 a favourite haunt of the different species of ducks. 'The 

 following August, after my visit to this place, Macdonald wrote 

 me as follows : " About two weeks after you left, mowers were 

 set to work about the point where the creek ends, and they 

 exposed in the vicinity close upon one hundred nests, all ducks'. 

 The creek was for some weeks a sight to delight the naturalist 

 or sportsman, being literally filled with young ducks of the 

 various species. Once fairly feathered and able to fly, they 

 took wing for the lake, which at present is covered with all 

 manner of ducks, geese, swans, and other water-fowl. The 

 season for geese opened the 15th of August, but ducks and 

 grouse do not come in until September 1st. In the meantime 

 there is a great cleaning up of guns." No doubt Rush Lake 

 is a paradise for sportsmen in the fall, for there are myriads 

 of wild-fowl on the lake, and I am informed that 100 geese 

 and ducks a day is considered only a fair bag for one gun, and 

 any one very enthusiastic might kill three times this number. 

 Snow geese, called waveys by the natives and sportsmen, are 

 exceedingly numerous, so are Canada geese, white -fronted 

 geese, Hutchins', Ross's, and Brant geese, swans, and over a 

 score varieties of ducks, to say nothing of the cormorants, 

 pelicans, gulls, grebes and other birds. Truly Rush Lake must 

 be a wonderful sight in the fall of the year. Along the banks 

 of the creek I started a marsh harrier, and found its nest in a 

 patch of rushes. The nest was made of reeds on the ground and 

 was about four inches thick and one foot in diameter : the cen- 



