Hunting Duck Eggs in the Marshes of Lake Manitoba. 359


it was not dark till after 10 o’clock. So we seldom got to bed before

midnight, and were up and at it again in good season.


After we had, in general searches, found eggs of most of the

common varieties of ducks, we concentrated our efforts on finding

the scarcer or more elusive sorts that were lacking. We offered a

series of rewards for being shown certain nests, and we ourselves

hunted hard. For example, there was the ruddy duck. Three males

were constantly seen in a pond of the marsh close to camp. I had

searched for hours and days without result, wading through the

labyrinth of aquatic vegetation.


Finally, on Sunday afternoon, June seventh, as I went down

to the slough after a good rest to have a look, I saw a female ruddy

with eleven young swim out from the rushes. This made me

nearly frantic, and I resolved to find a nest next day at all hazards.

Starting in bright and early, before a great while I had found a red¬

head’s and a scaup’s nest, from each of which the young' had recently

hatched. Then I plunged into an awful tract of rushes and canes.

The stuff grew away up over my head, and the dead growth was like

a solid wall, the water being over knee deep.


I was nearly exhausted struggling through the stuff, when I

received a thrill that dispelled every trace of weariness. There,

right before me, lay a ruddy’s wicker-basket of rush stems, with

eight eggs showing. Upon investigating further I found three more

eggs beneath them, buried under a false bottom to the nest. The

nest itself was built under a great mass of dead stems with these

arched over it. My theory of this double nest was that one pair of

ruddies fought another and drove them away from their nest, which

they then appropriated, building a second story over the eggs. The

defeated householders then seemed to have removed and built

another nest near by, for within an hour I found another nest

about a hundred yards away in the same tract with four eggs,

which might have been the remainder of the first set. The first

nest, unfortunately, was deserted and the eggs spoiled. The eggs in

the second were only four days from hatching, so I was just in time.


The white-winged scoter also gave us a hard tussle. That

incipient set found the first day was abandoned. The scoter is the

last of the ducks to lay, usually not laying all its eggs till about the



