WOOD DUCK. 59 



eggs, is their most pernicious enemy on land. The young, when on the 

 water, have to guard against the snapping turtle, the gar-fish, and the 

 eel, and in the Southern Districts, against the lashing tail and the tre- 

 mendous jaws of the alligator. 



Those which breed in Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, move 

 southward as soon as the frosts commence, and none are known to spend 

 the winter so far nortli. I have been much surprised to find Wilson 

 speaking of the Wood Ducks as a species of which more than five or six 

 individuals are seldom seen together. A would-be naturalist in America, 

 who has had better opportunities of knowing its habits than the admired 

 author of the " American Ornithology," repeats the same error, and, I 

 am told, believes that all his statements are considered true. For mv own 

 part, I assure you, I have seen hundreds in a single flock, and have known 

 fifteen to be killed by a single shot. They, however, raise only one brood 

 in the season, unless their eggs or young have been destroyed. Should 

 this happen, the female soon finds means of recalling her mate from the 

 flock which he has joined. 



On having recourse to a journal written by me at Henderson nearly 

 twenty years ago, I find it stated that the attachment of a male to a female 

 lasts only during one breeding season ; and that the males provide them- 

 selves with mates in succession, the strongest taking the first choice, and 

 the weakest being content with what remains. The young birds which 

 I raised, never failed to make directly for the Ohio, whenever they escaped 

 from the grounds, although they never had been there before. The only 

 other circumstances which I have to mention are, that when entering the 

 hole in which its nest is, the bird dives as it were into it at once, and does 

 not alight first against the tree ; that I have never witnessed an instance 

 of its taking possession, by force, of a woodpecker's hole ; and lastly, 

 that during winter they allow ducks of different species to associate with 

 them. 



