388 
ANAS DISCORS 
Four of us would ride out on horseback, but only two would carry guns. Arrived at 
one of the numerous little sloughs varying in size from mere puddles to lakes a mile 
in length, the shooters would dismount and creep up to one end of the water, where 
there might be a low pass to a neighboring slough. The other members of the party 
would take the riderless horses in charge, and circle around to the far end of the 
same pond, driving out all the ducks, which at that season were mostly Blue-wdngs, 
Pintails and Shovellers. Several shots could sometimes be obtained on one such 
drive and in that well-watered country as many as fifteen or t w enty ponds could be 
driven in a single day. 
In New' England they w'ere shot mostly by crawling to feeding bunches after these 
had been marked down, and “shore-bird” gunners probably accounted for most of 
them. 
Alexander Wilson says that w here they formerly abounded on the inundated rice- 
fields of the southern States vast numbers were taken in traps baited with rice and 
made like a common figure-4 contrivance. He also says that on the Delaware the 
market-gunners used to kill great numbers at a single discharge by getting out of 
their floats and pushing them along over the slippery mud until they were within 
very close range. A good many used to be killed in our own fresh-water marshes by 
simply poling a boat through the marsh grass and shooting at jumping birds. Audu- 
bon w'as told by a professional New Orleans gunner that the latter had killed one 
hundred and twenty at a single discharge. Audubon himself saw one of his com- 
panions kill eighty -four with two barrels of a shoulder-gun ! 
Behavior in Captivity. Blue-wings are very often kept in American zoological 
collections and they are favorites with amateurs. They are so easily trapped alive 
that dealers frequently have large numbers for sale at very reasonable prices. I have 
often bought them for $5.00 or $6.00 the pair and once or twice for less, though I 
have also been asked as much as $18.00 the pair for birds said to be hand-reared. 
They are not particularly well suited to large enclosures, and really ought to be 
kept in small pools, well protected from overhead and underground vermin. There 
is something very mysterious in the way these Teal will gradually disappear from a 
collection of water-fowl without leaving a single trace, not even a bleached bone or 
a pile of feathers. I confess I have never been able to account for this. They do have 
a way of growing secondaries which almost take the place of primaries, and I have 
seen Teal w'hich I thought safely pinioned, fly quite easily over a four-foot fence 
after their new feathers had growm out. 
The Blue-wings are undoubtedly the most delicate of all our North American 
ducks, much more so than the Carolina Duck {Lampronessa) . In our cold northern 
w inters, in spite of good shelter, their feet seem to dry up and become frost-bitten, so 
that the spring finds many of them lame and in miserable condition for breeding. 
