SHOVELLER 27 



Shoveller was ever more plentiful in this region than it is to-day. Brewster's long 

 experience with the birds of the Cambridge region, and that of Thomas Nuttall be- 

 fore him, show that in the last century there has been no decided change. 



South and westward along the Atlantic seaboard the species does not become 

 common until one reaches Maryland. Even at those great gathering points, — the 

 Back Bay of Virginia and Currituck Sound, North Carolina, — it is by no means a 

 plentiful duck. It comprises about 1 % at the Princess Anne Club, Virginia, and 

 from 1.2% to 1.3% of the total number of ducks taken between the years 1889 and 

 1917 at the Currituck Club. The number taken in one season there varied from 

 7 to 111. At the Swan Island Club, Currituck Sound, in the nine seasons (1909-10 

 to 1918-19) when I know the records were well kept, the proportion was consider- 

 ably larger, about 3.3% of all ducks shot (795 out of 24,125). At the mouth of the 

 Santee River, South Carolina, the percentage was about the same as at Swan Island 

 for the years 1901-09 (717 out of a total of 22,084 ducks). In the old days, when 

 rice was grown in these marshes, the Shoveller is said to have been far more plentiful 

 (J. L. Peters, U.S. Biological Survey), but I am inclined to think that it was never so 

 abundant as on the Gulf Coast. 



Nowhere in the United States do Shovellers concentrate in such numbers as at the 

 mouth of the Mississippi and along the coast of Louisiana. The Louisiana Conser- 

 vation Commission Report estimates that in the season 1913-14, 36,864 Shovellers 

 were shot in a total of 283,435 ducks taken in that State (over 13%). From my own 

 observation I should say that they comprised 15% of all ducks in Vermilion Bay 

 marshes, Louisiana. 



Near Albuquerque, New Mexico, Leopold (1919) estimates that this species com- 

 prises about 10% of all ducks. In Monterey County, California, the records of the 

 Empire Gun Club (1905-13) show that it comprised 18% of all ducks shot; and the 

 records of two San Francisco Game Transfer Companies for 1910-11 tell us that 

 5855 Shovellers were handled in a total of 56,763 ducks (10%). The Shoveller is 

 said to have diminished considerably in the past few years in California (Grinnell, 

 Bryant and Storer, 1918), but now that market shooting has been stopped, and the 

 better class of ducks are on the increase, it is doubtful if it will be destroyed in as 

 large numbers as formerly. 



In what is really the eastern part of its center of abundance, in Minnesota, the 

 report of the Commissioners for 1919 and 1920 estimates that the Shoveller was sixth 

 in order of abundance in the former and seventh in the latter year. It seems that 

 about 4% of all ducks belong to this species. 



As I remember the plains of northern Montana, I should say that this duck is 

 second only to the Blue-winged Teal in abundance early in September. Oberholser 

 (1920) places it next to the Blue-wing as a summer resident in western Nebraska, 

 and speaking of southwestern Saskatchewan, Bent (1907) remarks that it and the 



