56 Ways of Wood Folk. 



tramp with a field-glass and eyes wide open may 

 give a rare, distant view of him ; but only as one 

 follows him as a sportsman winter after winter, meet- 

 ing with much less of success than of discourage- 

 ment, does he pick up many details of his personal 

 life ; for wildness is born in him, and no experience 

 with man is needed to develop it. On the lonely 

 lakes in the midst of a Canada forest, where he meets 

 man perhaps for the first time, he is the same as 

 when he builds at the head of some mill pond within 

 sight of a busy New England town. Other ducks 

 may in time be tamed and used as decoys ; but not 

 so he. Several times I have tried it with wing-tipped 

 birds ; but the result was always the same. They 

 worked night and day to escape, refusing all food 

 and even water till they broke through their pen, or 

 were dying of hunger, when I let them go. 



One spring a farmer, with whom I sometimes go 

 shooting, determined to try with young birds. He 

 found a black duck's nest in a dense swamp near a 

 salt creek, and hatched the eggs with some others 

 under a tame duck. Every time he approached the 

 pen the little things skulked away and hid ; nor could 

 they be induced to show themselves, although their 

 tame companions were feeding and running about, 

 quite contented. After two weeks, when he thought 

 them somewhat accustomed to their surroundings, he 



