The Wood Duck 79 



acorns. Its fondness for the latter on which it feeds largely 

 in autumn gives it in some localities the name of acorn duck. 



In my boyhood these ducks were very plentiful in our 

 streams and marshes ; now they are very rare. Almost every 

 spring two or three pairs of them are seen flying up Fall 

 Creek at Buzzard's Roost, but, so far as I know, they do not 

 breed in this locality. Dr. A. K. Fisher in 1901 in the Year 

 Book of the U. S. Department of Agriculture under the title 

 Two Vanishing Birds, published a very full and interesting 

 account of the woodcock and the wood duck. He very clearly 

 demonstrates that unless vigorous measures are taken these 

 two birds are doomed to extinction. Spring shooting is that 

 which does most to bring this about. He says "it goes without 

 saying that birds are most easily and more completely de- 

 stroyed on the breeding grounds than on areas which they 

 merely pass over during migration ; for when breeding season 

 arrives and the nesting site is chosen birds become less shy 

 and more inclined to remain in the neighborhood, so that the 

 gunners (the term 'sportsmen' can not be used in this con- 

 nection), while in search for late migrants, have little difficulty 

 in killing all the wood ducks that are to be found." Is it not 

 a shame that there are those who have so little consideration 

 for the useful and beautiful creatures that God has given us 

 that they destroy them even to utter extinction? 



