34 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



beneath, looking for their game. At length they spy 

 me or my boat, and I hear a faint quack indicative 

 of alarm, and suddenly all arise and go off. In the 

 meanwhile I see two black ducks sailing with them 

 along the shore. These look considerably smaller, and 

 of course carry their heads more erect. They have a 

 raw, gosling look beside the others, and I see their 

 light bills against their dusky necks and heads. At 

 length, when I get near them, I hear their peculiar 

 quack also, and off they go. iThe sheldrakes appear to 

 be a much more lively bird than the black duck. How 

 different from the waddling domestic duck ! The former 

 are all alive, eagerly fishing, quick as thought, as they 

 need to be to catch a pickerel. 



Feb. 27, 1860. I had noticed for some time, far in the 

 middle of the Great Meadows, something dazzlingly 

 white, which I took, of course, to be a small cake of ice 

 on its end, but now that I have climbed the pitch pine 

 hill and can overlook the whole meadow, I see it to be 

 the white breast of a male sheldrake, accompanied per- 

 haps by his mate (a darker one). They have settled 

 warily in the very midst of the meadow, where the wind 

 has blown a space of clear water for an acre or two. The 

 aspect of the meadow is sky-blue and dark-blue, the 

 former a thin ice, the latter the spaces of open water 

 which the wind has made, but it is chiefly ice still. 

 Thus, as soon as the river breaks up or begins to break 

 up fairly, and the strong wind widening the cracks 

 makes at length open spaces in the ice of the meadow, 

 this hardy bird appears, and is seen sailing in the first 

 widened crack in the ice, where it can come at the 



