The Merganser does not always select such a site, 

 for undoubtedly it is as easily satisfied as the other 

 ducks above mentioned, as well as its cousin the 

 Hooded Merganser (a much smaller bird) and is 

 equally pleaced with an entirely open hollow in a tree 

 stub some ten feet high or less. Audubon in fact 

 states that he had found several nests on the ground 

 and not one in a tree. 



Perhaps the tree building habit was first formed 

 through the selection of the top of a very low stub. 

 Two Black Duck nests which I have found were 

 placed on hammocks or small elevations in swamps, 

 one of which was undoubtedly the remains of an old 

 stump, and Mergansers nests when on the ground 

 are probably similarly situated. From this the next 

 step would be for the duck to make use of the open 

 top of a low stub perhaps three feet high, and after 

 this a higher one, until gradually the selection might 

 include a closed in hole at a considerable elevation. 



It was my good fortune to witness twice the emerg- 

 ing of a young brood of Mergansers from an extreme 

 situation of this kind, an old Pileated Woodpecker's 

 ihole about forty feet high in the limb of a live elm, 

 standing about fifteen feet from the edge of the To-, 

 bique River in New Brunswick. 



On June 18th, 1910, I fished the famous salmon 

 pool at the fork of the river, and having incidentally 

 run the canoe close to the shore near where this old 

 elm stands, I landed and rapped several times sharp- 

 ly on the tree with a stick, for I had been told that a 

 wood duck — which on the Tobique means a Golden 

 Eye — nested there the previous Spring. The female 



19 



