62 Ways of Wood Folk. 



be newly built, only the stranger birds will fly straight 

 in to his decoys. Those that have been there before 

 will either turn away in alarm, or else examine the 

 blind very cautiously on all sides. If you know now 

 how to wait and sit perfectly still, the birds will at 

 last fly directly over the stand to look in. That is 

 your only chance ; and you must take it quickly if 

 you expect to eat duck for dinner. 



By moonlight one may sit on the bank in plain 

 sight of his decoys, and watch the wild birds as long 

 as he will. It is necessary only to sit perfectly still. 

 But this is unsatisfactory ; you can never see just 

 what they are doing. Once I had thirty or forty close 

 about me in this way. A sudden turn of my head, 

 when a bat struck my cheek, sent them all off in a 

 panic to the open ocean. 



A curious thing frequently noticed about these birds 

 as they come in at night is their power to make their 

 wings noisy or almost silent at will. Sometimes the 

 rustle is so slight that, unless the air is perfectly still, 

 it is scarcely audible ; at other times it is a strong 

 zuish-wish that can be heard two hundred yards away. 

 The only theory I can suggest is that it is done 

 as a kind of signal. In the daytime and on bright 

 evenings one seldom hears it; on dark nights it is 

 very frequent, and is always answered by the quack- 

 ing of birds already on the feeding grounds, probably 



