238 BIRDS 



ing the sociable birds by means of painted wooden images 

 of ducks floating on the water near the blind, they com- 

 mence the slaughter at daybreak. But ducks are of all 

 targets the most difficult, perhaps, for the tyro to hit. On 

 the slightest alarm they bound from the water on whistling 

 wings and are off at a speed that only the most expert shot 

 overtakes. No self-respecting sportsman would touch the 

 little wood duck — ^the most beautiful member of its family 

 group. It is as choicely colored and marked as the Chi- 

 nese mandarin duck, and a possible possession for every one 

 who has a country place with woods and water on it. Un- 

 like its relatives, the wood duck nests in hollow trees and 

 bird boxes and carries its ducklings to the water in its 

 mouth as a cat carries its kittens. 



The large group of sea and bay ducks contains the can- 

 vasback, red-head, and other vegetarian ducks, dear to the 

 sportsman and epicure. These birds may, perhaps, be 

 more familiar to some in butcher-shop windows, than in 

 life. Enormous flocks once descended upon the Chesa- 

 peake Bay region. To Virginia and Maryland, therefore, 

 hastened all the gunners in the East untU the canvasback, 

 at least, is even more rare in the sportsman's paradise than 

 it is on the epicure's plate. Every kind of duck is now 

 served up as canvasbaCk, even impossible old squaws, the 

 noisy black and white ducks that stay around northern 

 feeding grounds until they are quite frozen over. Some 

 sea ducks, which are fish eaters, have flesh too rank and 

 oily for the table. They dive for their food, often to a 

 great depth, pursuing and catching fish imder water like 

 the saw-billed mergansers or shelldrakes which form a dis- 

 tinct group. The surf scoters, or black coots, so abundant 

 off the Atlantic coast in winter, dive constantly to feed on 



