TENTH ANNUAL MEETING. * 9 
Next come the ducks, wild and domestic. The latter are very 
destructive, not only to the fish but to the fish food of the stream. 
They are almost always at work feeding during the day, and are 
not easily driven away. 
The best plan is to have no ducks yourself, and if your neigh- 
bors have them and they come on your premises, offer to buy 
them, and with the understanding if they have more and they 
trouble you that you will shoot. I have seen a tame duck catch 
and swallow a trout six inches long. 
But few species of wild duck trouble fish much, but during the 
past winter I was annoyed by a flock of what I called sawbills or 
sheldrakes. Most of the streams throughout the country were 
frozen, and they came to our Caledonia Spring Creek, as that 
never freezes. I had a hard time with them for about two weeks 
in trying to keep them off. If occasionally I could get a shot 
they would only fly to the other end of the stream, and would 
soon be back. (The stream is only about one mile long.) They 
would go over the large spawning beds where you could see 
from one hundred to a thousand fish, and after they had been 
over it you would not see a fish, and could not find one near for 
all that day, and once or twice it was the third day before they 
began to show up again. 
I found that shooting did not work, so I made some scarecrows 
out of old clothes and set them up on the bank of the stream. 
That did very well for a day or two, but they soon saw through 
the fraud and were as bad as ever. I then thought I would try 
something that would move, as I saw that a boat on the stream, 
or a person in motion would start them the moment they saw it, 
even if a long way off. So I made some small red flannel fiags 
and put them by the side of the scarecrows, and that did the busi- 
ness, and I had no more trouble with the sheldrakes. 
Next I have the common hoot or screechowl. I have but little 
to say about them, as they have given me but little trouble or 
damage that I know of. What first made me suspect that they 
were up to some mischief was that I found them in my steel 
traps that were set for muskrat, mink, etc. In setting traps for 
these we generally place them under the surface of the water 
‘from one to four inches, and when I found the owls in them I 
