FLYERS, SWIMMERS, AND DIVERS 243 



not confound his dusky mate with several other obscure 

 looking ducks must take note of her lead-colored bill and 

 legs, broad, sharply pointed tail feathers, and dusky under 

 wing coverts. The pintails carry themselves with a 

 stately elegance that faintly suggests the coming swan. 

 Their necks, unusually long and slender for a duck; 

 their well-poised heads and trim, long bodies, unlike 

 the squat figure of some of their kindred; their sharp wings 

 and pointed tails — these characteristics give them both 

 dignity and grace in the air, on the land, or in the water, 

 for they appear equally at home ia the three elements. 



But of such charms as they possess they are exceedingly 

 chary. In the wet prairie lands and grass-grown shallow 

 waters which they delight in, hunters find these birds the first 

 to take alarm — ^troublesomely vigilant, noisy chatterers, 

 with a-very small bump of curiosity that discourages tolling 

 or decoys; nervous and easily panic stricken. At the first 

 crack of the gun they shoot upward in a confused, strug- 

 gling mass that gives all too good a chance for a pot shot. 

 If they had learned to scatter themselves in all directions, 

 to dive under water or iuto the dense sedges when alarmed, 

 as some ducks do, there would be many more pintails alive 

 to-day; but usually they practise none of these protections. 

 There are men liviag who recall the times, never to return, 

 when ducks resorted literally by the million to the Kanka- 

 kee and the Calumet regions; and pintails in countless mul- 

 titudes swelled the hordes that thronged out of the North 

 in the autumn migration. In spite of their enormous fer- 

 tility, their strong, rapid flight, their swimming and diving 

 powers, their shyness and readiness to take alarm — ^in spite 

 of the lavish protection that nature has given them, and of 

 their economic value to man — there are great tracts of 



