82 
ANAS RUBRIPES 
Young leave the nest very soon after hatching, in one case in the late afternoon 
when they were hatched in the morning (C. S. Allen, 1893). The female uses all the 
usual deceptions and tricks to lead one away from her concealed brood. It is not 
known just how long the female usually remains with the young flock but probably 
on an average she does not leave until they are half grown. Whether she rejoins her 
own brood later on, after her moult is completed, it is impossible to say. The late 
William Brewster seemed to think that this was probably the case. In his notes on 
the birds of Umbagog Lake he says that he has seen young no larger than robins 
going about alone. 
Status. There is no doubt in my mind about a marked increase in Black Ducks 
since spring shooting was stopped in Massachusetts in 1908. The same is true of the 
species everywhere, and the Federal Migratory Bird Law, plus the treaty with 
Canada, has regulated the seasons both in the United States and in Canada. Be- 
sides this, all the large markets have been virtually closed. I could cite evidence on 
this increase by the page, but it is not necessary, and the facts are too w'ell known to 
all New England sportsmen. 
Up to about 1910, the local breeding ducks seemed everywhere to be growing 
less, and so also were the assemblies of birds upon the coast in August and Septem- 
ber. And this was not all; for the early autumn flights of “ Green-legs ” w ere getting 
smaller and smaller. On the other hand the “Red-leg” type, the wintering ducks 
in New England, showed no change in numbers, and there is a good deal of evidence 
to show that the Red-leg form has been increasing and extending its w inter range 
southward for tw’enty or thirty years at least; it may even be extending its breeding 
range west and north. 
Brew ster’s Cambridge records showed that the Black Duck had not changed much 
in the past seventy-five years, that is, it had been a rare breeder for a long time. 
Wintle (1896) thought that it w'as likely soon to be a rara avis in eastern Canada. 
Herrick (1910) w rites that among the records of a club at Monroe, Michigan, at 
the w’est end of Lake Erie, the proportion of Black Ducks to Mallards has risen be- 
tw'een 1885 and 1908 from about 14% to about 40%, a remarkable change. Before 
1865 it was an uncommon bird there. At the north shore of Lake Erie, on the Long 
Point Marshes, nothing of the sort has happened, as it has always been very com- 
mon there. 
Mr. W. B. Mershon, a w^ell-knowm authority on the birds of Michigan, writes me 
from Saginaw, that fifty years ago on the Saginaw River, then a paradise for ducks, 
his father considered the Black Duck a very rare bird and noted the fact if he shot 
two or three during the season, among many hundreds of Mallards. His informants 
tell him that on the Illinois River there were no Black Ducks forty years ago, and 
none in Wisconsin or Minnesota. He thinks the range is gradually extending w'est- 
