Shells on Union Bay 79 



than the mere substitution of one collegiate activity for 

 another. 



As I entered the inlet I found myself listening for the 

 typical song of the area, that of the Traill flycatcher. For- 

 merly its soft lisping note could be heard all through the 

 nesting season. I wondered why I did not hear it until I 

 realized that it had come always from underbrush below the 

 cotton woods or from the willows, and that all of this growth 

 had now been removed. Then the reasons for absence of 

 song became clear; they were due not to the existence of 

 the building, but to the changes in the landscape made neces- 

 sary by the new activity. 



The absence of wood ducks seemed to confirm this ex- 

 planation. I had not seen them in the vicinity since the new 

 structure had been started. Before that, they had become a 

 little more numerous each year and had begun to nest in 

 the area. The manager had cultivated the mature birds. He 

 had attracted them by regular feeding and had so far won 

 their confidence that, when the first brood ever recorded in 

 the marsh had been hatched, the parent birds had brought 

 them to the float to feed. I had often watched these tiny and 

 timid bunches of gray and brownish-black down as they 

 rushed for the bread which the manager tossed on the water. 

 Because nesting sites largely control the population of these 

 lovely green- and violet-crested birds, we constructed some 

 wooden nesting boxes as a substitute for the holes in trees 

 which they prefer, and had put them in the large poplars 

 to the north of the canoehouse. Our prospects of establishing 

 this most striking of all American ducks were abruptly ended 

 when the preparation of the building site necessitated the 

 cutting of the trees and the filling of the marshy shore. The 

 wood ducks have permanently disappeared from that section 

 of the marsh, and so far as I know there are no proper sites 

 near, although there may be some just outside the marsh. 



I studied the area further. The inlet had been a shallow 



