YOUNG DUCKS ON THE POND 69 



become so tame that they swim' about among the boats 

 like domesticated fowl and will even come out on the 

 lawn near the hotel. These same ducks when out on the 

 river beyond the 'dead line' are as wild as the wildest. 



"At Lake Worth, Florida, the same conditions prevail, 

 and the scaup ducks swimming in the lake become so 

 confiding that they may be fed from the hand. In the 

 ponds of the Middlesex Fells reservation, near Boston, 

 Massachusetts, where gunning is prohibited, the black 

 ducks have greatly increased, and some now nest in the 

 vicinity of Boston. 



' "When the State of New York first prohibited Spring 

 shooting, breeding black ducks were rare on Fisher's 

 Island. A few years later there was -good shooting on 

 the island each Fall because of the ducks that were 

 reared there. Dr. Shaw, who was rearing wild ducks 

 near New Bedford, Massachusetts, asked the farmers 

 near his place to post their land and prevent shooting as 

 a means of protecting his ducks from poachers. This 

 was done, and within two y^ars wild black ducks began 

 breeding on the farms all about." 



A friend of mine who reared some wild mallards near 

 a pond in Maine informed me that one of his wild ducks 

 came in the house. These ducks could fly well, and 

 some of them were shot when on a visit to a neighbor- 

 ing lake. Ducks on a preserve often are quite tame in 

 the presence of their gamekeeper, but take wing when 

 a stranger approaches. This is as it should be. I was 

 talking with a gamekeeper one day, at Allamuchy, New 

 Jersey, when some of his ducks came in, flying high over 

 the tree tops. They headed to the wind and were de- 

 scending to the little pond by which we were standing, 



