BLUE-WINGED TEAL 
385 
begins as early as August and is pretty well over by the 15th or 20th of September. 
The last great flight in my own region took place in 1904, on the 12th and 13th of 
September, during which time three hundred and twenty Blue-wings came in to one 
market-stall in Boston, from the region about Newburyport (C. W. Townsend, 1905). 
On one of these days I, myself, saw a flock of fifty at Wenham. On September 5, 
1919, I visited what used to be one of the great gathering places for these Teal, on 
the famous marshes at Merrymeeting Bay, near Bath, Maine. Although it was about 
the right season for Blue-wings I saw only fifty or sixty among many thousands of 
Black Duck, and professional gunners assured me that it had become a scarce bird. 
In the Montezuma Marshes of central New York, Griscom writes that there is one 
Blue-wing now for every thousand twenty-five years ago ! The saving feature of the 
situation lies in the fact that Teal are not now supposed to be shot before the 15th of 
September, so that the bulk of the migrants through the northern States ought to be 
immune, and a great many pass through the southern States before the season opens 
there on November 1. Indeed the small number of returns from banded birds bears 
out this assertion. We do not know certainly from what breeding ground the Blue- 
wings which migrate through our northeastern States come. It is doubtful whether 
the regions about the Gulf of St. Lawrence could ever have supplied the bulk of 
them, for, in spite of the fact that they once nested in suitable spots all along the 
lower St. Lawrence, on the Gulf islands and in Nova Scotia, they probably never 
nested abundantly save here and there. I have gone into some detail on the status 
of these Teal in the Northeast because their reduction over a large area to not more 
than five per cent of their original numbers is an excellent example of what over- 
shooting will do to a species which is not well able to look after itself. The same 
amount of perseeution practiced toward a duck with different habits may have little 
or no effect. 
The records kept by the shooting clubs on Lake Erie are not of much value in 
estimating the decrease of this bird, for the reason that regular shooting at these 
points usually began too late to catch the height of the September flight. Further- 
more, when other ducks are abundant, sportsmen often stop shooting at Teal. The 
decrease in Blue-wings in that region, judging by the records of the Long Point and 
the Monroe Marsh Clubs, and by talks with local sportsmen, is certainly slight as 
compared with the diminution in New England. Very likely most of the Teal which 
assemble there migrate chiefly to the Gulf Coast, as the Black Duck and Mallard 
seem to do, and either do not reach the Atlantic coast at all or only do so at points 
as far south as South Carolina. At the Monroe Marsh Club between the years 1885 
and 1901 the Blue-wings equaled in numbers the Green-wings, and slightly ex- 
ceeded the Baldpate and Pintail. They represented about nine per cent of all the 
ducks shot. At Long Point, on October 2, 1916, 1 noted that these Teal were present 
in thousands, and were about three times as plentiful as the Green-winged Teal. 
