BIRDS HUNTED FOR FOOD OR SPORT. 155 



supply of their favorite food. There, also, the influence of the 

 gulf stream is felt. The sounds are rarely frozen, and as the 

 waters are comparatively shallow the birds can feed at con- 

 siderable distances from the shore; therefore they find some 

 degree of safety there, as they are not so accessible to boats 

 or gunners as are the birds which remain about Massachusetts 

 Bay. Another advantage that they have about Cape Cod 

 is that whatever wind blows they always can find a sheltered 

 spot imder the lee of the Cape, or somewhere about Nantucket, 

 Martha's Vineyard or some of the other islands. 



The " Coots " are rarely shot in the south, where more 

 valuable Ducks abound, but their flocks form a principal 

 object of sport on the New England coast, where most fresh- 

 water Ducks have become rare. They are naturally rather 

 stupid birds, easily approached or decoyed, and their own 

 hardiness and thick, tough coat of feathers form their principal 

 protection. They are so hard to kill that " Coot shooting " 

 usually cripples a large percentage of the birds, which escape, 

 either to meet a lingering death or recover, as the case may 

 be. Since the law went into effect prohibiting Duck shooting 

 from January 1 to September 15 unusually large " beds " of 

 " Coots " have been observed in Ipswich and Massachusetts 

 bays, but previous to that time these Ducks had decreased 

 more or less along most of the New England coast. 



Walter Rich, in his Feathered Game of the Northeast, says, 

 the Scoters have decreased fifty per cent. Capt. Herbert L. 

 Spinney, an old " Coot " shooter, published an excellent ac- 

 count of the sport in the Maine Sportsman for May, 1897, in 

 which he says that twenty years before that time, both in 

 the spring and fall migrations, these birds could be found all 

 along the coast of Maine in great flocks or beds. Now he 

 says "perhaps not a shoal for miles is occupied, and if at 

 all, with only a few stragglers, and the flight consists of 

 small flocks of which you may see a dozen or fifty in a day, 

 and if the wind is favorable the birds will not stop at all." 

 Very little decrease has been noticed in recent years on the 

 Massachusetts coast south of Cape Cod, because the birds 

 which have been driven from other parts of the coast have 



