Hunting Duck Eggs in the Marshes of Lake Manitoba. 361


shoveller, mallard, gadwall, baldpate, blue-winged and green-winged

teals, redhead, canvasback, lesser scaup, ruddy duck, and white-

winged scoter. I also saw two or three hooded mergansers, one

bufflehead and one solitary specimen of our Eastern dusky or ‘ black”

duck. The latter here reaches about its Western limit. In a-

quarter-century of shooting our guide had seen but six.


The locations here chosen by the various species were as

follows : Redheads, canvasbacks and ruddy ducks nested out in the

deeper water in the thickets of rushes, or sometimes the cat-tail

reeds. The scaup occasionally selects such location, but usually has

the nest on real ground—usually the bank of a creek, an island, or

some ridge of land out in the marsh. This was true also of the

scoter—the big fellow that our Atlantic coast gunners call the

“ white-winged coot,” and consider to be a strictly maritime species.


These five kinds are distinctively deep-water or diving ducks..

The other seven, “river ducks,” so called, seldom nest out over the

water. We found their nests on the drier spots in the marsh, on

islands, or on the prairie, usually near the edge of the marsh or some

smaller slough, yet sometimes quite a distance from water. Fre¬

quently they nest quite near human habitation. We were shown

several nests close to the homes of settlers. One was close to a.

schoolhouse, a gadwall’s and was found by a little girl at recess.


One foolish pair of blue-winged teal built their nest close to

the front door of the unoccupied cottage next to us, under the step of

which resided a family of weasels. However, they managed to hatch

their brood of eight on the morning of our departure July twenty-

ninth, showing that incubation did not begin till the first week in

July. x4 number of similarly late nests were found, probably second

layings, the first having been destroyed by thieving crows.


Most of the ducks normally begin incubation the last week of

May or the first in June. Some mallards and pintails lay early in

May, though we found some sets much later. Most of the canvas-

backs and some of the shovellers finish their sets by the middle of

May or soon after. On our arrival broods of all these four had

hatched, some few being quite large.


Of the above twelve resident species, we secured eggs or

young of every one. We hatched the eggs in one kind of incubator,



