78 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



reported on as follows: twenty-seven observers note an 

 increase and eighty-three a decrease. Mr. Charles E. Ingalls 

 of East Templeton says that thirty to forty years ago Black 

 Ducks were very abundant; there were hundreds where one 

 is now seen. Bags of ten to fifteen were not uncommon 

 where birds were merely run into casually. Unnaturalized 

 foreigners have been hunting them from boats in the summer 

 time, killing the helpless young and the molting adults, until 

 they are nearly exterminated there. 



The Black Duck responds quickly to protection, and has 

 increased in numbers in recent years wherever it has been 

 protected in the spring. Mr. Talbot Denmead of Baltimore, 

 Md., states that there has been a decided increase in Black 

 Ducks around Bath, Md., in the last fifteen years. All the 

 Ducks he gets are in good condition, as they are well baited 

 with corn. Mr. Benjamin E. Howell of Troy Hills, N. J., says 

 that sixty years ago Black Ducks were shot the year round 

 in his section. Since the stoppage of spring shooting, in 

 1908, ten pairs of Black Ducks breed on the meadows, where 

 one pair bred before. Mr. Gardiner G. Hammond, who 

 protects the Ducks along the shore of a pond on Martha's 

 Vineyard, states that about two hundred and fifty Black 

 Ducks are gathered there early in September, which probably 

 breed there or near by. The old and young Ducks are so 

 numerous in autumn that they leave evidences of their 

 movements from one pond to the other in the sheep paths, 

 where they travel. He never saw any Ducks breeding there 

 previous to his occupancy of the place. 



No Duck is more wary than the Black Duck, or harder 

 to deceive with wooden decoys. Sometimes on the sea-shore 

 a few will come to wooden decoys. Gunners along the sea- 

 coast sometimes attract this bird by putting out lumps of 

 mud or bunches of seaweed upon some point. The theory is 

 that the birds, seeing these objects from afar, believe them 

 to be Ducks; but that on a nearer approach they find them 

 to be neither wooden decoys nor living birds but harmless 

 objects, and suspicion being allayed the birds sometimes will 

 alight on or near the point. They are readily attracted in 



