124 



Bird - Lore 



Tales have been told of gunners shoot- 

 ing Ducks at spring-holes until the water 

 was red with blood, — tales of hundreds 

 of birds shot when they were starving and 

 unfit for food, — of birds so n'early starved 

 that they could hardly rise in the air. 

 Some of these stories may be exaggerated, 

 but there are enough authentic instances 

 on record to prove that all shooting 

 should be stopped in January and Feb- 

 ruary. This closes the shooting-season 

 on the coast when nature closes the ponds 

 of the interior, and this is fair to all gun- 

 ners. All authorities agree that spring 

 shooting is a most wasteful practice. It 

 has extirpated the Heath Hen, Wild 

 Turkey, Passenger Pigeon and Eskimo 

 Curlew, and decimated other Curlews, 

 Godwits, Golden Plover, the River Ducks 

 and the Upland Plover, and driven out 

 birds that once bred here. Its advocates 

 say that it is useless to protect the birds 

 here while large numbers are killed in 

 winter in the South. This argument is 

 fallacious for the following reasons: (i) 

 Many of our wild fowl remain ofE the coast 

 of New England all winter, particularly 

 in mild seasons. (2) Most of the birds 

 killed in the South are bred in the North- 

 west, and never come here. (3) Granting 

 that some of our birds are killed in the 

 South, why should we kill in spring our 

 own birds that have escaped the southern 

 gunners, thus "killing the goose that lays 

 the golden egg." 



The southern people are awakening to 

 the necessity of game protection. The 

 laws in some of the southern states are 

 already better and more efficiently en- 

 forced than some of those in the North. 

 In time to come, the South will protect 

 her birds fully as well as the North. 



Uniform protection of all wild-fowl in 

 winter and spring has an almost immediate 

 and very striking effect. The owner of a 

 little pond in Rhode Island does not allow 

 shooting on his premises, and Black Ducks 

 breed there every year. A Massachusetts 

 man controls all the land around one side 

 of a large pond, and does not allow any 

 winter or spring shooting there. Last 

 July. 75 Black Ducks were counted on 



his side of this pond, and these birds 

 were reared there. On Fisher's Island,. 

 New York, breeding Ducks increased so 

 rapidly, under a few years of spring pro- 

 tection, that there was good shooting in 

 the fall on the island, while on the oppo- 

 site shore, in Connecticut, where spring 

 shooting was then allowed, there were 

 few, if any, Ducks. 



Wheirever any state has passed and 

 enforced a law protecti'ng wild-fowl in 

 spring. Ducks, and in some cases. Geese , 

 which had been driven out, have come 

 back to breed and increased rapidly in 

 numbers. They are coming back now to 

 Massachusetts. All this shows how even 

 local spring protection in the North in- 

 creases the birds. 



The law to be effective must be uni- 

 form, with all shooting and sale stopped. 

 Otherwise there is continual temptation 

 to lawbreaking. If there is a close season 

 and an open market here, there will be a 

 continued demand for birds from the 

 South for our markets, so long as they 

 remain open. Therefore, open markets 

 bring about the destruction of our birds 

 and others in the South, while the law 

 protects them from the gunner here. If 

 the shooting of a single species is allowed 

 during the close season, all species will be 

 shot. A law which permits the shooting 

 of Brant only, on Long Island, during the 

 spring, has resulted in the killing and 

 marketing of all kinds of protected Ducks 

 in spring, and the people of New York 

 State have now repealed that law. 



The present law in Massachusetts 

 should be sustained, as it corrects all 

 these evils. 



Our Massachusetts Law now prohibits 

 the shooting and sale of Swans and Wood 

 Ducks at all times, and the killing and 

 sale of all species of Wild Ducks, Geese 

 and Brant annually from December 31 

 to September 15. 



After having passed the New York Sen- 

 ate and being favorably reported by the 

 Fish and Game Committee of the Assem- 

 bly, the bill extending the open season on 

 water fowl to April i was lost in the 

 Assembly by a vote of 68 to 73. — T. G. P. 



