io6 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



ling swan. The wild rice still grows on the wide 

 Newark marshes, but clouds of coal smoke, not 

 geese, ascend from its midst. The pretty wood- 

 duck, one of the duck family which is classified as 

 "river" in distinction to the "sea" or "bay" ducks, 

 was formerly a common summer resident of north- 

 eastern America, and was, in fact, often called the 

 summer-duck. But it had too many interesting 

 characteristics — for its own good. In the first place, 

 it could be eaten, as it subsists largely on vegetable 

 seeds and insects. In the second place, it not only 

 nests on dry land, but, unlike all other ducks, in a 

 tree, a hollow tree. Finally, especially in the 

 autumn when the woods are full of acorns and other 

 food, it flies about often a long distance from water, 

 quite like a grouse, and makes an even better shot. 

 Doctor Eaton reports that in 1902, when the law 

 prohibiting spring shooting was finally passed, the 

 wood-duck had been practically exterminated from 

 western New York. Since that date it is, he says, 

 "holding its own" in that region. I am not con- 

 vinced that it is even holding its own in my neigh- 

 borhood, though three or four years ago a mother 

 duck hatched her brood somewhere close to the 

 Housatonic River in the Berkshires, and came swim- 

 ming along one day close to the golf-links at Stock- 

 bridge, with six little brown ducks in a procession 

 behind her, answering her tiller as if they had all 

 been on one tow-rope. It was such a pretty sight 

 that we stopped our game to watch. The wood- 

 duck, however, not only requires hollow trees to 

 nest in — and a tree large enough to hold a nest for 

 a mother eighteen inches long — but it requires a 



